Set Space
How to Free Some Extra Hard Drive Space?
"Extra space, where does it goes when we need it the most?" maybe you asked yourself when there is no room to spare to install that game you have just bought or when you want to backup your documents you have just copied from your friend's PC. The best solution is of course to buy a more roomy hard drive. But if you want a momentary and critical solution to free your hard drive space, you can try some tips below:
1. Turn off your System Restore System restore can be a nice addition in a rainy day in case your PC shows an anomaly. What it does is creating a backup of several system states the number of which depends on the space we allocate to it. So the larger we allocate a space to System Restore, the more record of your system state can be recorded (such as installation, system alteration, uninstallation, driver update, etc.). Thus, it means that we can go farther back to find the safest possible state if in case some problem occurs in our system. But most of the time, we do not need so many recorded state of our system. Or even, we want to completely deactivate System Restore feature. If it is the case, you can follow these instructions:
First thing to do is to right-click 'My Computer' icon and select properties to go to 'System Properties'. Inside, select 'System Restore' tab. In this menu, you will see all of your hard drives are listed. If you want to choose individually how big 'System Restore' uses each of your partition, you can select the desire partition and then choose 'Settings'. Inside, you can choose disk space used by System Restore. Just slide down to 'Min' side to free the most out of your space. If you want to simply Set All of your partitions not to be used at all by System Restore just check the 'Turn off System Restore on all drives' check box at the upper side of the box.
2. Lowering your Paging File Size To lower your paging file or virtual memory size, go to 'System Properties' and select 'Advanced' Tab. Inside 'Performance' category, select 'Settings'. Inside 'Performance Option', select 'Advanced' tab and click 'Change' under 'Virtual Memory' category. Here are listed all of your partitions. By default, Windows usually set this setting with 'System managed size'. This means that Windows will set by itself the space that is required every an application requests a virtual memory. This means more flexibility. But sometimes, it could mean more time access. But in this article, this option only means one thing: inefficiency. So please select 'Custom Size' and set your own 'Initial Size' and 'Maximum Size'. Please set the fix size for both categories. The size itself depends on your physical RAM memory. It's about 150% higher. So if you have 1GB of RAM, we suggest to set it by 1500 (MB) both in 'Initial Size' and 'Maximum Size'. And please also check whether or not the other partition spaces are also used. If it is, then set it to 'No Paging File'. The objective here is to only use one partition as a virtual memory to safe some space.
3. Disable Hibernation Hibernation mode uses our hard drive space to store whatever it has in memory at the previous state before the PC start to hibernate. Disk space that is used for this feature to run varies in every PC. But it can eat as large as 2 Gigabytes. So be sure to disable this feature when you do not need it. To disable this function, go to your 'Power Option Properties' in Control Panel and simply look for the 'Enable hibernation' mode and uncheck it. You're set.
4. Delete another Unused Users Account User account can store a lot of data that takes a lot of space of your hard drive. This happens especially if you often choose to install every program for all users, which means all of the settings and system configuration of that application will be saved in every user account. So delete the user account that you are not using it often, or the one that it is not important. Even if you just delete it and then recreating the same account (account with a same name) once more, this can make a difference in terms of disk saving. This is because all of the configuration files that has piled up are removed, and now you have a fresh account. But to delete a user account, the first thing you should ask yourself is that there should be no important document inside the account. If you are certain, then do the deletion. To do this, just go to 'User Account' menu. You can reach this menu by clicking the picture of your profile in the 'Start Menu' or via 'Control Panel' menu. Inside, you will be asked for 'Pick a new picture for your account' but press 'cancel' here. This action will take you to another menu of 'User Account'. Take a notice on the left side bar menu, under 'Related Task' option select 'Change another account'. Under 'Pick an account to change' select the user account to delete. This will take you inside the account. Select 'Delete the Account' here. You will be prompted to choose 'Keep Files', 'Delete Files', Or 'Cancel'. Please 'Delete Files' to free more space. (But once again please make sure that there is no document that you want to keep inside this account).
That's it, you are done. With all of these simple tips, you can gain lots of extra space. Furthermore, you can gain more by cleaning up junk files, browser's cache and history, and obsolete registry entries. You can do this by using Windows' "Disk Cleanup" features. But most often it is not optimal. So my suggestion is try scanning with a system optimization software and see how much free space you can get. Most of the software offer free scanning function. But to find which one is the best in cleaning up the mess is certainly a different matter. But as a starting point, you can read our Registry Easy Review. This can give you a benchmark.
About the Author
Find more Windows tips at PC Software Adviser
Pink Floyd - Echoes set to 2001 Space Odyssey (part 3)
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