windows folder size more than 30 GB

Question

I am using windows 7 with 8GB RAM for last 8 months, C drive of 75 GB currently out of space, 8GB Page file (on auto manage) and 8GB hibernate file, i checked windows folder is of more than 30 GB. is it fair amount of size and how can i clear some space.

Recyclebin is empty, C Drive protection is ON and is consuming 5.7GB only (i wanna keep it max limit is 8GB) and i have installed Visual studio 2013 and MS SQl Express 2012 and Ms Office 2010.

Solution 1

You are most likely suffering from WinSxS update bloat: Multiple versions of outdated files are not cleared are kept in WinSXS long after being superseded by updated versions.

Run Disk Cleanup, chosing "System Files Cleanup" and check "Windows Update Cleanup" - these names might not be 100% accurate, as I have no english Windows 7 in use.

Solution 2

If the above solution (cleanup + winSXS) doesn't work, you can manually delete folders/files starting with the dollar-sign (these might be hidden files).

But I actually don't think these are present anymore on Windows 7. ATI tends to store driver in C:/AMD which you can safely delete.

Let's not forget that Win7 bare is ~15Gb, ~5Gb for updates and SP1, Office another 10, VS and SQL aren't light either on disk-space. So that's at least 50Gb. You might have dropbox or something like that installed, that's another couple of gigs. Some project files, cygwin and other utils and your 75Gb is easily filled.

My basically bare Win7 has 57Gb used. it has office, dropbox (~10gb) and DragonNatSpeaking. but no SQL or VS.

You can easily move dropbox/gdrive/onedrive to another disk, likewise for your downloads/documents/home folder to save some space.

Comments

[Ramhound]

Ran the Disk Cleanup utility. This will remove everything in the Windows folder that can be safetly be removed. I suggest turning off your hibernation folder and/or install a larger HDD.

[Eugen Rieck]

@Ramhound Hibernation files are not iniside the Windows folder!

[Ramhound]

@EugenRieck - I knew that. But its unlikely the Windows folder can get much smaller. I would estimate the Disk Cleanup tool will only remove 3-5GB of data from the WinSxS folder. This means the folder will still be large so he can look at other ways to increase the amount of free space the hdd has or replace the existing hdd with a larger disk. This question has been asked several times already, there already is a full complete set of answers, in the possible duplicate question.

[Eugen Rieck]

@Ramhound - Nothing in the OQ points to WinSxS, so this is definitly no duplicate: Somebody just observing a too big Windows folder would not look for "Why does the /winsxs folder grow so large"

[Ramhound]

@EugenRieck - Alright? Does not change the fact this question has been asked before in various ways, I even found a question with an almost identical similar title, which is actually how I found the possible duplicate question.

[Eugen Rieck]

@Ramhound so why not provide a link to this "question with an almost identical similar title" so we can close this one as a real duplicate?

[Adeem]

please share link to other question if its duplicate, i will remove this question in that case

[Ramhound]

Here is one though with the same advice as the other question I linked to.

[QMaster]

I suggest you to use Windows Directory Statistic, As I not prefer to use most of this tools but it seems to be great and I think is rectification of windows lake about folder sizes and you will have wide and integrate sight of you drive space, You can download it from sourceforge.net/projects/windirstat/?source=typ_redirect

[StingyJack]

WinDirStat takes several minutes to scan a drive for file sizes. WizTree takes <10 seconds on my laptop, and ~30 seconds on a server used for compiling code over the last few years (10's of millions of files)

[StingyJack]

Before you go deleting anything, its worthwhile to try setting the Compression attribute on the WinSxS folder. Right click the WinSxS folder, click "Advanced" button, then check the box for "Compress contents to save disk space". This will give you some space back and does not risk that windows servicing be broken in the future.(should you try to upgrade windows or a program, it may need to reapply these files, which is why they arent deleted).