Bloated Windows

[arith]

My PC started out with a 99.9GB C: drive with 35GB used about a year ago, but without adding a single new program has grown to over 50GB. I delete all but the most recent restore points.

What is causing this? I have a 2.2TB drive, is it possible to make C: bigger without losing photo's?

I notice a lot of NVidia driver files, do I need all that lot.

[Manfred M]

Resizing a drive dynamically always means that there is a risk that you will lose everything, so I would not recommend going there unless you have backed everything up externally and are willing to spend time rebuilding the drive if something goes wrong.

I NEVER store any of my work files (regardless of whether these are image files or documents) on the system drive. Not a good practice. Leave those on a data drive, preferably a separate physical drive.

If you haven't cleared your web browser cache recently, you might want to do so, mine contains 350MB of mostly "garbage".

[FrankMi]

I agree with Manfred on this one, Steve. Use a System (or Boot) drive for just that if at all possible and use another hard drive for data files. The NVidia driver files are likely there because your video card is using them.

Mucking around deleting things that you don't think you need can be very risky as there are many files that are shared between multiple applications and services so make sure you are in a position to, and have tested the ability to fully recover the system before you make even the most innocent changes.

Much of the operating system drive 'bloat' can come from temporary internet files, cookies, ad-ware/mal-ware, and the huge profusion of automatically downloaded anti-virus updates that help protect your system from attack by hackers.

Also, having data and system files on separate drives can be a huge benefit should either hard drive fail. You've either been able to save the operating system and only need to recover data from your backup, or you've retained all your data and could plug that drive into another PC if the OS drive fails.

I use more than three drives but basically use one for the operating system, one for data, and one for images. I also install all of the programs on the data or image drives and even point the Outlook mail files to the data file. This way I can easily backup both the data and image drives to external hard drives and if needed, plug them into another PC for virus scanning or immediate use.

Hope this helps!

[arith]

This is after it is all cleaned up Manfred. I've got a data partition with just data and a 99.9 GB C: drive. I thought that was big enough since I don't add any programs.

The E: drive is too big to backup and that is why I have a separate C: drive with a mirror image of it at the end of the HDD in a partition formatted by Gigabyte unknown to Windows.

It took an hour and ten minutes to backup the C: drive today and at the rate Windows is growing I will be out of memory in a couple of years.

I was just wondering about the NVidia, the files have different numbers but are these duplicates optimised for games I don't play?

What about the images; does Photoshop save copies of files worked on?

[Melkus]

I will start from the bottom first. Most of them what you see as exter files are updates which replace the old file and in most cases are needed. If you uninstall an update you are then vulnerable to the security flaw or stability issue it patched which would be like you never installed the update in the first place, so you have to be-careful what you delete.

Have you try a dish clean up yet? Windows come with it own program for cleaning the hard drive of junk files or you can down load a 3th party program like CCleaner which dose this and you can also check your registry for problems. I know CCleaner works having used it for years and it is safe unlike some other which may have spy wear or could cause other problems.

I would try to clean up my HD frist and see how that gose

[arith]

Cheers Frank. Last time I tried to move stuff on a partition I lost the whole lot. It will take ages but I've got a 32GB Flash drive and I could transfer files to another computer.

Lot of trouble though, can't understand why updates of 300MB make it 3GB bigger than before.

[arith]

Cheers Paul, I use both TuneUp Utilities and Ccleaner. According to TuneUp my registry is already optimised and I defragment and clean before backup.

[FrankMi]

Last time I tried to move stuff on a partition I lost the whole lot.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, took it out and burned it! LOL!

Now I use multiple drives for data and I can easily copy/paste thousands of data files between drives.

I also have three hot-swap bays in the front of my PC. One is used to back up data files to the external drives and the other two are for virus and or failure recovery. I have two SSD drives with identical copies of the OS. One stays in the PC most of the time and gets periodically swapped out with the other to keep both current with anti-virus and other updates. When I have a problem I can disconnect from the internet, insert the clean OS copy, purge all drives of any virus that might be there, and verify that all my backups are up-to-date. This also easily addresses the situation where a virus might have modified a file that is in continual use and can't be cleaned because it is active.

My Windows 7 OS drives have about 58GB of system files.

[arith]

My anti virus, Kaspersky has 6,000,000 signatures. Why are they not listed? However 58GB is a lot Frank. I can't believe the anti virus checks through 6,000,000 signatures before it will allow data on the PC.

I don't like updating Kaspersky because it is a big load of trouble and a big download, although Smart Money and password entry stopped working with IE11. Kaspersky never fix a bug if an update is available.

[DanK]

From the snippet you show, it looks like a lot of the clutter is files for installing updates. Many of those (as opposed to the updated executables they install) you can delete. to use an example you don't show, every time Lightroom updates, it downloads an installer that is around 150MB. There is no reason to keep any but the most recent of those, and not much reason to keep the most recent, since you can readily download it again.

My suggestion is that you look at directories where installers are and sort by size and date. with a bit of googling, you can probably identify some of the larger files that can be safely deleted. Nividia probably has something on line that identifies which the installers are and where they are downloaded. When I have control over it, I direct all of these installers into one of two directories, the windows downloads folder or a director of my own I labeled "installation files." That makes it easier to clean out some of the stuff that accumulates.

Don't delete anything from directories under \windows other than the temp directory, and don't delete anything from \program files unless you are very sure of what you are doing. And if in doubt, leave it alone.

If you don't already, update and scan with Spybot weekly. As a side benefit, it will clean out your temp directory for you.

[Andrew1]

As others have indicated, get rid of the garbage first. Download CCleaner (free) and analyze the Registry then erase it then run the Cleaner which will empty out the cache. I run the registry cleaner about once a week and the cache cleaner at least once a day. I also run ATF Cleaner (free) to kick out the stuff CCleaner missed. Next either download Defraggler (free) or go into your own PC system tools and run the Disk Defragmenter that is included. It will take awhile. That I also do about once a week just so it doesn't take so long. See how much these basic routine housecleaning steps free up for you. I also have my browser set so it erases my history every time I sign out. I have quite a few Bookmarks set for the sites I visit so I have no need to keep old browsing history. It helps keep the garbage to a minimum.

[FrankMi]

Thanks to your thread Steve, I took a closer look at my system drive and noticed that since the last rebuild, I had neglected to address two large files, Pagefil.sys and Hiberfil.sys.

As I don't do hibernation on my desktop, I shut this service down and in doing so removed almost 7GB of wasted space. I also usually point the Paging File to my Data drive so that it doesn't do paging on the system drive. Pointing this to the Data drive, along with removing the Hiberfil and cleaning up a few other files, reduced the OS from 58GB to 42GB and as a bonus, the system runs a bit faster.

[skilsaw]

I was having difficulty sleeping so I logged in to Cambrige in color.
After reading this thread, my head hurts.

[IzzieK]

Hey David...Join the club.

I was having difficulty sleeping so I logged in to Cambrige in color.
After reading this thread, my head hurts.

[ajohnw]

I haven't use Windows for a long time but I would be surprised if things have changed. Just plug up your new drive and you will find it as the next available drive letter - probably D: Then read this which isn't exactly the same as your set up as the idea is to just leave system files on an SSD. In your case it will leave them on your old hard drive.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/windo...o-size_p2/2941

The same article is also referred to for windows 8.

The old way of doing this sort of thing - installing the new drive and then simply directing applications to use it may not work out any more. Seems even on Linux that we must have picture,video etc directories of the user home directory and not clutter up our desktops. I just add directories and shortcuts to my desktop as and how I like.

John
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[RustBeltRaw]

If Bridge or Lightroom are caching previews on C:\, those folders can get huge pretty quickly. The first time I cleaned mine out, it contained 21GB. And I discovered about 43GB of duplicates on my backup drives just a few days ago. Windows is surely at fault for at least some of the bloat, but even a meticulous file organizer can wind up with duplicates.

However, you're not alone. My laptop's main drive is a 120GB Intel SSD which is 87% full. Not exactly sure how. Most of the files are compacted, I defrag regularly.... Might need to kick the gaming habit or upgrade. My data drives (953GB RAID1) are about 55% full.

[Scott Stephen]

When I wiped my hard drive and installed Windows 7, it freed up an insane amount of space on the hard drive. I don't think Win 7 is smaller; I think the process just dumped a lot of garbage you can't reach just by emptying cache, etc... I had been trying to delete stuff for months but could never make a dent, but wiping it and starting over made a ton of space. I also stopped storing my photos on the c: drive, and moved them all to a portable hard drive.