Clean Up Windows C Drive

Throughout these years using Windows OS, the insufficient C Drive space is always a haunting problem for me. Usually I allocate 80-120 Gigabytes and it is filled up within a few months, even though I never throw anything into C and make sure to never install anything into C.

Here are some of the ways I clean up my C Drive. I record them here in case I need to Google “How to set virtual memory on Windows” over and over again.

System

• Clean up Desktop, Download folder, Recycle Bin and Document folder.
• MS Disk Cleanup: Right click Drive Icon > Properties > Disk Clean-up. Do not stop here, click into the Clean Up system files. Important items to look for: Temporary Internet Files, Windows Update Files, Windows Old.
• Rebuild or just disable indexing (This reduces size of Windows.edb which can be several Gigabytes): Control Panel > Indexing Options. Modify the items to be indexed (Keep Start Menu only, or just don’t index anything) and rebuild indexing. From now on, use Everything to search instead the Windows build-in search.
• (Once off) Shift system folders to another disk.
• (Once off) Turn off hibernation (This removes Hiberfil.sys which can be several Gigabytes): CMD command powercfg.exe /hibernate off. This should be off by default. If you saw a large Hiberfil.sys using Space Sniffer, considering turning off hibernation and that file would be deleted.
• (Once off) Shift Virtual Memory to another disk (This removes Pagefile.sys which can be several Gigabytes): Right click This Computer > Advanced system settings > Advanced Tab > Settings > Change. Allocate all virtual memories to other disks. After restarting the computer Pagefile.sys would be removed.
• (Not recommended) MS Disk Compression: never tried before.
• (Not recommended) Disk Defragmentation: does more damage than benefits for solid drives

Third Party Tools

Run them as administrator.

• Space Sniffer: rediscover the lost disk space.
• Dism++: clean up garbage files.
• Driver Store Explorer: delete old drivers.

Optimizing Applications

Generally, if possible, move all download/cache folder to another disk. If the app does not support this, use mklink command to link a directory: mklink /D "previous-path" "target-path".

• ADOBE
• Office
• Tencent: Tim/QQ/WeChat can adjust download folder location.
• Unity
• Chrome
• VSCode