How to Free Up Space in Windows

For some, the fight for storage space on your PC can feel like an endless battle. Which files are safe to delete? Where is all of my storage space going? James has some tips for you to clean up your digital file cabinet!

Leave a reply with your requests for future episodes.

FOLLOW US ELSEWHERE
---------------------------------------------------

[JD..........]

I remember my shocked expression in 2006 when I learned a USB drive could store 2 gb.... Good times.

[_Yeeted_]

How to free up space? Download more storage.

[jacobfavreault]

With how sharply the price of SSDs has fallen in recent months and years, getting 1 TB is really affordable. I've been upgrading my storage piece by piece for a while and it's allowed me to hoard as much as I want!

[Wraithdagger]

I remember when XP could fit on an 8GB partition.

[BleuSquid]

So that's what happened to the good ol' Disk Cleanup! I noticed it was missing in the Disk properties dialogue last week at work after they upgraded several of our systems to the latest and greatest. (I'm still a Win10/Linux heathen at home. Spent too much on building this PC to bother rebuilding it just for Win11)

[STCatchMeTRACjRo]

here is my tips of space managing on windows:
1)change the location for the Temporary files, instead of C driver set it to D driver
2)change the location where you install stuff if possible.
3)edit the user profile location, instead of saving it in 'C:\Users' set it to save to 'D:\Users'
4)use symbolic links. You can install Office to C but decide its better if its been on D due to space issues. Instead of uninstalling and re-installing office to D, you can move it to D and then symbol link it to C.

[yerachmielb]

3:06 says, "Windows 11, " proceeds to show Windows 10 start menu. I want!

[prawny]

If your pc is working fine delete system restore, shadow copies as well as turning off and deleting hibernation file.

They can be turned back on afterwards but be sure to make a new restore point to give you a current restore point.

It can save you hundreds of GB of storage space.

[LunaStar]

I have a 2TB SSD just for Windows 11 and I have Storage Sense set for 1 month as I feel like it works well for my own PC usage. I've also set it the same way for my mum's PC.

[CutiePi]

C;\ drive being called Call of Duty is so funny but true

[joshuadeleeuw]

alternatively what you could also do is install treesize which gives you a very easy to use overview of how big each folder (and program) is on your pc and neatly ordens it at size, then simply click through the largest folder which then displays everything in that folder again ordened at size and choose whatever you want to delete and when youve saved a couple of gb's which should take only a few minutes just continue as normal

[ShimadaSharra]

Windows: I can delete not needed files: Me: WHY ARE THEY THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE IF THEY ARE NOT NEEDED?

[mhdalvinhd]

There are another to free space if you already delete temporary files but still full storage in it, is page file (virtual memory) in drives. Some page file use to open many apps as you want if you have only less than 16GB of RAM, but it can decrease your free storage itself as how much committed memory use.

[tim]

Remember when an update to Storage Sense deleted everyone's downloads folder?
Good times, good times.

[staffie]

English World 😳 love how these videos, usually have something even the techiest of people, haven’t noticed… keep up the good work.

[paxdriver]

A pcie expansion card for extra nvme storage is great, but windows will see any system storage space as a threat and just fill your drive with page files, caches thumbnails, and restore points you never asked for or wanted.

Changing to Linux was the best think I ever did.

[notjustforhackers]

Say what you want about Linux package managers.... they have an awesome auto clean up. Plus no bloatware is nice.

[KageCM]

Any recommendations for cleaning out duplicate files? I'm not talking about backups. With around 2 decades or so of migrating computer to computer over the years, with lets say less than stellar organizing on my part, I'd guess around a third or so of my total used space is unintentional duplicates. I'd really like to clear them out so I could make some clean backups without so much wasted space.

[codeXjs]

Late video. I already formatted my PC to free up space for my C Drive :(

[BlueHasia]

Never understood why people skimp on storage space.

My pc has about 24tb of storage. I know im overkill but just saw my friend order a $4k pre build and it only came with 1tb ssd.