7 Ways to Reduce Your Disk Size in Windows 7

7

109 thumb - 7 Ways to Reduce Your Disk Size in Windows 7

If you have an SSD drive, this would be more beneficial for you. If you have a regular physical spindle hard disk, this guide would also help you reduce your disk size.

Over the years the number one issue that prevents SSD from being adopted wildly to a wider audience is the lack of disk storage space. Because of this, people would choose to spend extra money to buy larger SSDs or spend much less buying an SSD that can just fit for an Operating System. While there is a limited disk space with SSD, there are also some ways you can use the limited storage space a bit wisely.

Here are seven ways to reduce your disk space usage up to 10 GBs while preserving all your user data and programs that you have installed. Sounds too good to be true? Keep reading and find out.

1. Disable Windows Hibernation

This will instantly give you back few GB disk space depending on how large your memory is. By default, Windows will create a hidden hibernation file that matches the exact size of your total usable memory. If your system has 8GB of RAM, disabling Hibernation will instantly give you back 8GB of disk space on your OS partition. Check out the guide on how to disable Hibernation in Windows 7.

2. Reduce Page File Size

If you already have a relatively large memory, you can reduce the virtual memory (Page File) that are being used by your system. It is not recommended to eliminate the use of Page File, but you can certainly reduce the size by manually. If you have an SSD installed, you don’t necessary need a page file. Setting it to 0 would give you back a few GB of space instantly.

3. Clean up Services Pack Backup File

Windows 7’s SP1 (Services Pack 1) has been out for a while and should be applied on to your system automatically by now if you have your computer set to automatically install the update. If you have it installed for a while and haven’t run into any issues after the update, it’s time to delete the Services Pack Backup file and gain your valuable disk space back. Check out the guide on how to delete Service Pack Backup files in Windows 7.

4. Reduce/Clear Browser Cache Size

Every browser will store images and contents of the sites that you always visit unless you disabled browser cache. The different browser has the different way to store your cache content. For a general way of removing browser cache, we recommend this utility called CCleaner.

5.  Migrate User Profile From Primary OS Partition to a separate hard drive/partition

If all of the above methods are not enough for you, chances are you have too many data stored in your user profile. Usually, user data (user profile) will occupy a significant portion of your disk space, by following this guide you will learn how to change the Windows default User Profile location from C drive to D drive or any other partition. And by doing so, you are freeing up a large chunk of space out of your OS partition disk storage.

6. Use TreeSize or Other Utility To find uncommon temporary files

TreeSize is a utility that lets you visually see how much storage each folder/subfolder is using. If you are an advanced user, this tool will let you find files that are unusually large hence hunting down the source of the issue will possibly eliminate those files.

7. Archive Old Files into ZIP archives

Yes, this is old school but still works very well if your primary goal is to reduce the disk space usage.

And Last but not Least

Cleaning up core dump files after Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) and Windows System Restore points is also an effective way to do reduce the disk space size.

Update: to clean up dump files, go to start menu > type “Disk Cleanup” > choose C:\ or your OS primary partition

system error memory dump files thumb - 7 Ways to Reduce Your Disk Size in Windows 7

See the screenshot above, check “System error memory dump files” option, and click OK.

7 COMMENTS

  1. Hi Liew,

    thanks for asking this, I’ve updated the post. Now including the guide to clean up dump files. Hope that helps !

    Cheers

  2. %SystemRoot%System32Cmd.exe /c Cleanmgr /sageset:65535 & Cleanmgr /sagerun:65535

    copy the above line into run, in start, its a extended version of dik cleanup

  3. with all the advanced word proc. applications available, why is the grammar so poor, so many misspelled and missing words. If someone is not very familiar with the topic (probably why they are here looking for help) this only adds to their frustration and problems. You have excellent advice and tips, but the grammar errors take so much away.
    Sorry to nit pick, but I like your tips and advice and just don’t understand the errors.
    Still a good site overall. Thank you.
    JS

    • OP plz disregard this nit picking online loser. I find your article extremely useful and informative. This guy has too much free time in front of a monitor he actually sat there and tried to point out all the grammatical errors.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here