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There is not enough disk memory, what should I do? Space on your hard drive is disappearing - let's figure out the reasons

Over time, the space on drive C decreases until there is not enough space for Windows to function properly. This is due to various files cluttering up disk space. This article tells you where the free space goes and how to clean up the C drive.


You can find and delete most of the unnecessary files yourself, without third-party programs. Of course, some tools speed up this process significantly. But before you use them, you need to understand what you should get rid of and what it is better not to touch so as not to harm the operation of your computer.

Where does the space on drive C go?

Surely many have wondered: where does the space on the C drive go, why is it getting smaller. It’s one thing when programs are installed, and quite another if it goes “nowhere”.

In the second, when the space disappears “to nowhere”, you need to perform periodic cleaning.

Why do I lose space on drive C:

    • Folders are filled: “Desktop”, “My Documents”, “Downloads”, “Trash”. In Windows 7 they are located in the following path: C:\Users\Username\.
    • Browser cache also takes up a lot of space. It is used by web browsers to speed up the loading of viewed pages. The cache is cleared in different ways: through the browser menu or programs, but more on that later.
    • The Temp folder is filling up. It stores temporary files. You can safely delete the contents of this folder, nothing bad will happen. To open Temp, use the Win + R key combination. In the window that opens, type %temp% and click OK.

  • A significant amount of disk space is taken up by the paging file (pagefile.sys) and computer hibernation (hiberfil.sys). The first stores intermediate data about running programs if there is not enough free RAM space. The second is sleep mode, its size is equal to RAM.
  • System Restore also reduces space on your local C drive. It periodically scans the system and creates restore checkpoints. By default, this feature is enabled. Where it is not in demand, disk space is wasted.
  • Other trash. Many programs, even after uninstallation, leave behind unnecessary files that take up space. You can get rid of them using various tools, for example, the CCleaner program, which can delete the cache, clean the registry, and uninstall programs.

Now that you know why space on the C drive disappears, you can safely get rid of this garbage and unclaimed Windows functions.

Disk C is full: how to free up space?

You can increase the space on drive C by cleaning the above-mentioned folders. Go through them - it won't take much time. In our case, by clearing only the “Downloads” folder we were able to free up 12.3 GB.

Don't forget to clean your desktop. If you have many shortcuts, movies, music, and photos may get lost among them. What was placed here temporarily, but safely forgotten on the desktop, can take up a lot of space.

Don’t forget to empty the Recycle Bin; files that are not completely deleted continue to take up disk space. To completely delete, past the Trash, use the key combination Shift + Delete.

Remember earlier we talked about the Temp folder? Clean it too. In our case, it takes up 18.6 MB - a small thing, but nice.

We continue to clean the local disk. To do this, we will use the standard Disk Cleanup program.

To run this tool, open “My Computer”, select local drive C, right-click on it and go to “Properties”.

In the new window, click on the “Disk Cleanup” button. The program will evaluate the space that can be freed.

Clearing the browser cache

Every browser has a cache that takes up space. It can be removed in two ways: manually - through browser settings, or with third-party programs.

Let's take a look at manually clearing the Google Chrome cache.

At the top right, click on the button “Customize and manage Google Chrome” - “History” or press Ctrl + H.

Then click the “Clear history” button, specifying the “all time” period. Check the boxes next to what you want to delete: clear browsing history, download history, cookies, cache. After checking the required actions, click “Clear history”.

The cache of other browsers is cleared in a similar way. But it's quite tedious, isn't it? To speed up this process, use CCleaner. You can download the program on the developers' website. The free distribution is sufficient.

What else should I delete?

After cleaning the disk, do you feel like there is still not enough free space? Then use the graphics program Scanner. It will clearly show you how much disk space Windows and other files take up. All you have to do is find the unnecessary garbage and remove it yourself.

Launching the program is extremely simple and straightforward: download the archive, unpack it and launch the Scanner shortcut.

Select the drive you are interested in. After some time, the program will show its contents.

This is what the results window looks like.

By pointing the mouse at the space occupied in the center of the circle, information about the volume of the disk filled with various files will be displayed. The light central area of ​​the chart represents free space.

Each layer of the graph represents a folder; its size depends on the amount of memory allocated on the disk. By moving the mouse cursor over any of the cells, it will become clear to you which section is responsible for what.

If you click on any of the graph clusters, information only about it will be displayed. Everything is clear here, hints are given everywhere.

Below is the Users folder with information about the used space. On the right are buttons: parent folder, step back, etc.

Scanner is a convenient program that clearly shows the location of files and the amount of memory allocated for them. This tool will be an invaluable aid to those of you who are having difficulty finding the reason why your C drive is low on space.

Disable the paging file and computer hibernation

After completing the above steps, do you still not have enough space on your C drive? Then you can disable the paging file and computer hibernation.

To disable the page file in Windows 7, open My Computer, then right-click on an empty area and go to Properties. In the new program window, click on the “Advanced system settings” section.

On the Advanced tab, click Settings under Performance.

In the next window the “Advanced” tab will open, click “Change”.

In the window that opens, you can set the size of the paging file or disable it. It is not recommended to disable paging on computers with a small amount of RAM.

If you have more than 4 GB of RAM, you can try disabling the page file. A message appears about low memory - turn paging back on.

Now let's talk about hibernation - an energy-saving mode of the operating system that stores the contents of RAM when the computer is turned off. From the definition it is clear that the reserved size for the hibernation file is equal to the amount of RAM - this is how much Windows will take from the system disk for this function.

Want to free up enough RAM space on your C drive? - Disable hibernation.

In Windows 7, open Start and type cmd in the “Search programs and files” search box. Then move the cursor over the found program and right-click on it. Select "Run as administrator" from the context menu.

At the command line, enter “powercfg /hibernate off” to disable hibernation or “powercfg /hibernate on” to enable it. After typing the desired command, press Enter.

Windows Recovery System

You may need system recovery if Windows crashes: drivers have been lost, the consequences of a virus attack, the PC was turned off incorrectly.

The System Restore function creates checkpoints for which space is allocated on drive C. Therefore, you can increase the disk capacity by disabling or reducing the number of restore points.

Whether to disable Windows recovery or not is up to you to decide. To understand whether you need this feature, remember how often you resort to using it.

To disable System Restore or reduce the number of checkpoints in Windows 7, go to “Start” - “Control Panel” - “System and Security” - select “System Protection” on the left.

Select the system drive, click “Configure”.

Then a settings window will open in which you can disable system recovery or reduce the amount of space allocated for it.

In Windows XP, the System Restore settings are located here: go to Start - select Settings - Control Panel - System - then System Restore.

Well, we’ve figured out the reasons for lack of space and ways to eliminate them. Now you know what to do if drive C is full.

When using a computer, quite often the user faces a problem when the system writes: “not enough space on drive C.” Under no circumstances should you ignore this message, and in most cases you will not be able to ignore it (even if you want to). The appearance of this warning is due to the local disk C being clogged and requires immediate user intervention.

Sometimes the message that there is not enough disk space appears due to incorrect allocation of sectors on the hard disk, when too small a size is allocated for the local disk. This situation occurs especially often among users of Windows 7 and higher, since out of habit they leave small amounts of space for the C drive, not taking into account the fact that new systems require much more space. If for Windows XP and programs 30-40 GB was enough, then for new versions of the Microsoft shell program it is advisable to double this amount, otherwise quite often you will have to solve the problem with the appearance of the “not enough space on drive C” notification.

If there is not enough space allocated for the system, then it would be advisable to re-install and redistribute the space on the hard drive. If this is not possible (for example, an office computer that cannot be “touched”) or the reason is contamination, a series of cleaning actions should be carried out.

First of all, you need to clean the system of everything that creates programs, browsers and Windows itself. For these purposes, you can install any of the available free programs. Quite often, the amount of such “system garbage” reaches indecently large volumes, which provokes the appearance of the “not enough disk space” notification.

Then you should carefully review the folders of downloads, documents and the desktop for old and unnecessary files, images, etc. If in doubt, you can not delete them, but, for example, transfer them to another local drive with more space .

If the methods described above did not help and the system still complains that there is not enough disk space, then you will need to carefully check the installed programs. Some of them, for example, Photoshop, take up quite a lot of space and can be transferred to another drive, which will not affect their functioning, but will free up space for working with drive C. If you find outdated and unnecessary programs, you should get rid of them.

In order to eliminate the “not enough disk space” notification, you can perform some actions on the system, namely:

Turn off sleep mode;

In total, these two actions will give at least 4 GB of free space. To turn off sleep mode, you need to select “Power Options” in the control panel. There you need to find “Monitor off settings”. Then you should select the “never” option, which is responsible for transferring the computer to Then you need to open it (the “Win ​​+ R” combination) and write “powercfg - h off” there, confirming the action by pressing the “Enter” key.

To move, you should find the “Performance” item, located in the system properties, which can be selected by right-clicking on the “My Computer” icon. There is an “Advanced” tab, where you should open “Options”. Typically, the system is automatically configured to reserve space on drive C. The user must remove this drive. To do this, you need to select it and set the confirmation in the “Without paging file” item, confirming the actions by clicking the “Set” option. You can select another drive and install a swap file on it. You will have to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

If free space on drive "C" is rapidly ending, then the time has come to release it in various ways, which we will consider in this article. After all, a small amount of space on the system disk leads to all sorts of consequences, for example the situation when the computer starts to slow down or work in some programs becomes impossible.

Whatever one may say, there should be at least several gigabytes of free space on the system drive “C”.

In fact, you can free up space on the C drive in different ways. Additionally, you can add disk space using other disks. But first things first. After reading this article you will know where you can Lost space on drive "C", and what to do to get it back. You can take and use any of the steps described right now, or you can comprehensively apply all the tips and clean up space on the system drive.

Installed programs

Of course, most of the space on the system disk is occupied by installed programs, so first of all pay your attention to this point. Uninstall unused programs using a standard Windows utility.

By opening “Start – Control Panel – Uninstall a program” you can sort installed applications by date, size or name. Uninstall what you don't need.


In this way, you can free up, if not several gigabytes, then at least several hundred megabytes, which will allow drive “C” to “breathe” freely. I described the process of uninstalling programs in Windows 7 in more detail in the corresponding lesson on this site.

Basket

Remember that all deleted files most often end up in the Recycle Bin first. A folder called “Trash” acts as a temporary storage for everything deleted. But in fact, it takes up space on our computers.

In order to permanently erase data from the recycle bin, just right-click on it and select the appropriate “Empty Recycle Bin” item.


Downloads folder

Most often, downloaded files from the Internet are saved by default to the “Downloads” folder on the “C” drive. It’s not difficult to guess that if you constantly download something, but don’t move the files anywhere, then they will begin to take up hundreds of megabytes, or even several gigabytes, and the free space on the disk will become less and less.

Therefore, you need to open “Computer” and go to the “Downloads” folder.


And make sure that there are no large files there, and if there are, then delete them or move them to another drive.


This is another step that is more common for novice users and will help them free up disk space in Windows 7 or another system. Let's move on.

Temp folders

In Windows there are two Temp folders in which various temporary files are saved. For example, files that are needed when installing programs, drivers, updating Windows or antivirus, and so on. But after they become useless, you can simply delete them to free up some more space on the C drive.

Open “Computer – C drive – Windows folder”. Find the Temp folder there and delete all contents.


If some files are not deleted, it’s okay, just click the “Skip” button. The main thing is that most of the unnecessary “garbage” will be removed.

The second Temp folder can be opened by searching in Start by entering the query %TEMP% and opening the found folder. We clear its contents.


P.S. Don't forget to empty the Recycle Bin if data from the Temp folders goes into it.

Disk Cleanup

Clean up drive "C" from other unnecessary files you can use a standard Windows utility. To do this, just right-click on the disk and select “Properties” from the drop-down list.

Immediately on the “General” tab we need to click the “Disk Cleanup” button.

And wait a while while the program analyzes the data and finds possible unnecessary files. Then she will offer us to delete them by checking the boxes next to them.

Swap file

Windows has a paging file; this is a thing that is needed for those cases when there is not enough main RAM to perform tasks in programs. Typically, the paging file takes a couple of gigabytes from the system drive “C” for its needs. We need to make sure that these gigabytes are taken from some other disk.

You need to go to the “Properties” of the Computer. Open “Advanced system parameters”, here click the first “Options” button and on the “Advanced” tab, through the “Change” button, specify the size of the paging file on some other drive. This way we can free up space on drive “C” by a couple more gigabytes. But that's not all.

Hibernation Mode

If you want to save even more space on your system disk, I recommend disabling hibernation mode, but only as a last resort. This is a very convenient feature that allows you to put your computer into Sleep mode, leaving open folders, programs, etc., and turn it off even from the network. One way or another, by turning on the computer again, all opened folders, programs and data in them will be restored thanks to the Hibernation mode.

You can disable Hibernation mode by opening the command line through a search in Start.

And by writing the command: “powercfg.exe -h off” - to disable hibernation mode. Click " Enter ».


Now, after restarting the computer, we will see that there is a little more free disk space. And to enable this mode again, we need to write a similar command: “ powercfg.exe -h on" Naturally, all this is done without quotes.

System Restore

Another way free up space on drive "C"- delete recovery checkpoints, since they also take up a certain amount of megabytes. To see them you need to go to “Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - System Restore”.

A window will open where we can observe checkpoints that are created every time we update drivers, or install some programs, and so on.


This useful feature gives us the opportunity to restore our computer to a more efficient state. For example, after an unsuccessful attempt to update drivers, or after a virus attack. If such a situation happens, the first thing you can do is restore your PC using a checkpoint. I recommend leaving one last point and deleting the rest.

CCleaner program

If you install it, you will see the following window:


The most interesting tabs here are “Cleaning” and “Service”, where you can: remove everything unnecessary, clear the cache, remove programs from startup, and more. And on the tab " Registry“You can clean it simply by clicking the “Search for problems” button. I usually leave all the checkboxes that are checked there.


And one last thing.

BONUS

As a last resort, if you have catastrophic, chronic and permanent not enough disk space, then you can increase it using another disk.

Source

In the life of every user, sooner or later there comes a moment when running out of free space on drive C and a similar message pops up. At the same time, the computer begins to slow down terribly, many programs do not work correctly or do not work at all. It is advisable to avoid such a situation, but if it has befallen you, in this article I will tell you how to deal with it - Free up space on your system drive without damaging the system.

1. Windows temporary files

The first thing to do in such cases is to delete temporary Windows files. To do this, you need to delete all the contents of the folders:

\Temp
\WINDOWS\TEMP

for Windows XP:
\Documents and Settings\<имя_пользователя>\Local Settings\Temp
\Documents and Settings\<имя_пользователя>\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
\Documents and Settings\<имя_пользователя>\Local Settings\History

for Windows 7, Vista:
\Users\<имя_пользователя>\AppData\Local\Temp
\Users\<имя_пользователя>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files
\Users\<имя_пользователя>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History

In all “beast builds” of Windows, the location of the temporary folder may differ. To find the temporary folder, follow these steps:

Start -> Run(for Windows XP)
Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Run(for Windows 7, Vista)
In the Run window, in the Open field, enter the following text: %TEMP%
Click on the button "OK«.

It is best to delete files using a file manager such as Total Commander because: a) folder Local Settings usually hidden and the user may simply not find it; b) in a folder Temp There are several files that cannot be deleted because they are currently in use by the system. For Windows Explorer, this becomes an impossible task and it cannot completely clean the folder:

For Total Commander, both of these issues do not pose problems.

2. Windows update files

After operating system updates in the folder \WINDOWS\ There are still many folders whose names begin with “$...” You can also delete them all:

3. Browser cache

Internet browsers Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer (especially version 6) sometimes leave behind a huge amount of garbage on the system disk, which is also sometimes useful to clean. This is done like this:

for Mozilla Firefox: Tools -> Erase Recent History. Select item "All", press "OK":

for Opera: Settings -> Delete personal data. You can expand the list " Detailed setting", press " Delete«:

for Chrome: Chrome menu (toolbar) -> Tools -> Clear browsing data. Select the item " during all this time", press the button "Clear the history":

for Internet Explorer: Service -> Delete browsing history, or Service -> Internet Options -> Are common -> Browsing history -> "Delete" button...

In this way, you can clear drive C of several gigabytes of garbage, which consists mainly of many thousands of small (up to 10 kb) files, which can significantly slow down the operation of browsers and the computer as a whole.

4. Downloading browsers, torrent clients, DC, MediaGet, DownloadMaster, etc.

By default, all program data loads files onto the “C” drive, which very quickly leads to its clogging. To prevent this, it is necessary to configure the paths for saving files from the Internet “not on drive C” in each such program.

for Mozilla Firefox: Tools -> Settings -> General -> Path to save files:


for Opera: Settings -> Advanced -> Downloads - > Save downloaded files to:

for Chrome: Chrome menu (toolbar) -> Settings -> Advanced settings:

for uTorrent: Settings -> Program settings -> Folders

For other programs that download anything from the Internet or local network, the setup principle is the same.

5. Mail program databases (TheBat, Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Office Outlook, etc.)

With intensive exchange of information using email programs, the size of their databases can grow to incredible sizes over time. It is advisable to take this point into account at the stage of installing and configuring these programs, but if you haven’t done this, it doesn’t matter, you can still fix it.

for TheBat: Mailbox -> Mailbox Properties -> Files and Directories:

for Microsoft Office Outlook: Tools -> Email Accounts -> View or change existing accounts-> Create Outlook data file:

You can check whether everything is correct and at the same time delete an unnecessary file from drive “C” here: Tools -> Options -> Mail settings-> Data files:

For other email programs, everything is configured according to the same principles.

7. Temporary program files

Programs that work with large amounts of data, such as disc burning programs (for example, Nero Burning ROM), video (for example, Pinnacle Studio), audio editors, image processing programs (for example, Adobe Photoshop) during their work create temporary files of large size (the so-called “cache”) and, if there is not enough free space to create them, they refuse to work normally, and various failures occur. To prevent this, you need to promptly transfer their temporary files to another disk:

Nero Burning ROM: File -> Presets -> Cache:

Pinnacle Studio: Settings -> Project Options:

Adobe Photoshop: Editing-> Settings -> Performance:

8. Games

From the very beginning of using a computer, you should make it a rule: “If possible, do not install games on drive “C”! Moreover, modern games take up several DVDs, and after installation they can take up several tens of gigabytes. After installing several of these games, you will run out of free space on any disk, no matter how large it is:

9. My Documents and Desktop

This problem dates back to the dinosaur days of the very first versions of Windows. 8 generations of the operating system have already changed, and user folders are still located on the system drive. Moreover, it has worsened: starting with Windows Vista, additional folders have been added to them, such as “Pictures”, “Videos”, “Music”, “Downloads”, “Games”, “Contacts”, “Searches”, “Links” ...

There is also no standard procedure for transferring all user folders to another local drive. There are only a few possibilities, for example, in Windows XP you can move the “My Documents” folder:

Quite experienced and novice PC users have a bad habit of saving the necessary and most needed files on the desktop. A dozen or two gigabytes of information on your desktop is, unfortunately, not at all uncommon! What can you recommend? There is only one thing - to completely refuse to use these “wonderful opportunities” and keep all important information NOT on drive C. Moreover, the probability of losing information stored on drive “C” is much higher than on any other logical drive.

10.Programs

Review the list of installed programs and remove those that you will no longer use, especially large ones:

11. Sleep mode

If all else fails, disabling the use of sleep mode will save from 1 to 5 additional gigabytes.

for Windows XP: Start-> Control Panel -> Appearance and Themes -> Screen -> Screensaver -> Power -> Sleep Mode. Uncheck " Allow use of sleep mode»

for Windows 7, Vista: Start -> Control Panel -> Power supply -> Setting up a power plan -> Put your computer into sleep mode -> « Never". You can also disable the sleep function. Select "Change advanced power settings" and in the window, find sleep mode and turn it off. After disabling Sleep Mode, you can delete the hidden hiberfil.sys file in the root directory of the system disk. It’s a little easier to do this with help: just enter the command “ powercfg -hibernate -off«.

12. Other

Large files can appear in any other place on the system disk, where you wouldn’t expect to see it:

  • log files of some programs can grow to many tens of gigabytes;
  • one of the users may safely hide and forget the “collection of videos”. Where is the best place to do this? Of course, somewhere in the wilds of system folders on drive “C”;
  • some program or plugin for Photoshop stores its database (10-100 GB in size) in a user folder;

In such cases, it is necessary to check the size of all folders (including hidden and system) and find the “culprit” by eliminating. Using the Total Commander program, this is again easier to do: just press the Ctrl+Alt+Enter key combination in an open folder and the size of all attached files and folders will appear in the palm of your hand:

Another case: the folder for temporary files of Avira antivirus has grown to an incredible 16 GB:

13. Basket

Emptying the Recycle Bin is a fairly obvious way to clean up disks of already deleted files, but sometimes quite a large number of files accumulate there, which also negatively affects computer performance.

13. Cleaner programs

There are a huge number of programs that promise, with the click of one or maximum two buttons, to solve all the user’s problems with computer performance and raise it to unprecedented heights. As practice and common sense show, these programs can only solve some (or rather only 1, 2 and 3, and some other little things) from the problems described above, which in this particular case may well not be the most important problem. Although automating this process saves time: it is much faster to automatically delete temporary files than to clean them out manually. Standard disk cleanup program ( Start -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Cleanup) is slightly worse than alternatives (eg CCleaner).

14. What else do they write about on the “Internet”

On “our Internets” there are also many fables, myths, unverified facts and outright misinformation. These, from my point of view, include:

  • deleting, resizing, moving the swap file;
  • deleting backup copies of system files, drivers;
  • removal or modification of operating system components;
  • removing duplicate operating system files;
  • formatting drive C.

It is not advisable to touch operating system components without a clear understanding of what exactly you are doing and why.

15. Summary

Long gone are the days when you could put Windows, a bunch of programs and a lot of data into a 1 GB hard drive and still manage to work and play games. The amount of memory on the average user's hard drives has already crossed the mark of several terabytes, but the problems remain the same. Well, artificial intelligence will not soon replace experience and common sense. Keep an eye on the free space - for comfortable operation of the operating system there should be at least no less than 1/3 of the disk capacity, or no less (or preferably more) several gigabytes. The final step of this work is to achieve an even better result.

Why does my computer say there is not enough space on drive C? How to fix it. 1. Go to the C:\WINDOWS\Temp folder and delete its contents. This is a folder with temporary files that should be deleted on their own, but do not always do so. (There may be files that Windows will not allow you to delete, which means they are currently being used by some program). 2. Go to the folder C:\Documents and Settings\<Название вашей учетной записи>\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files and delete its contents. This is a folder with temporary Internet files that stores all the information that you view through Internet Explorer. If you do not find the "Local Settings" or "Temporary Internet Files" folder, then you do not have hidden and system files displayed. You can enable their display as follows: in any Windows window, open the “Tools” menu at the top, select “Folder Options”, select the “View” tab and in the window that opens, uncheck “Hide protected system files” and put a dot on “Show” hidden files and folders." 3. Go to the folder C:\Documents and Settings\<Название вашей учетной записи>\Local Settings\Temp and delete its contents. This is a folder with temporary files that should be deleted on their own, but do not always do so. (There may be files that Windows will not allow you to delete, which means they are currently being used by some program). 4. Go to the C:\System Volume Information folder and delete its contents. This folder stores some of those files that you even deleted from the Recycle Bin. You can skip those files that Windows does not allow you to delete and delete the rest. If Windows blocks entry to this folder, then you need to open access to it as follows. Right-click on this folder and select “properties”, then open the “Access” tab and check “share”, then click OK. After this, windows may give an error, but do not pay attention, now you can enter the folder. If this does not help (which happens extremely rarely), then right-click on the folder again, select “properties”, select the “security” tab and click on the “Add” button under the “Groups or users:” window, then in In the empty window that opens, enter the word “Everyone” (without quotes), click OK and check all the boxes below for full access. 5. Last thing. Log in to "My Computer", right-click on the "C" drive, select "properties", select the "Tools" tab and click the "Run check" button, then in the window that opens, check only the "Automatically correct system errors" checkbox " and click "Run", after which Windows should check after restarting the computer. As a result of the scan, Windows can find files that were copied and not copied, or saved and not saved, or deleted and not deleted, and before the scan took up space on drive C, but were not visible, and after the scan, Windows places them in the "FOUND" folder, which after checks can be deleted.