"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 the 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 desired 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 the Advanced Tab. Inside Performance
category, select Settings. Inside Performance Option, select the Advanced
tab and click Change under Virtual Memory category. Here are listed all of
your partitions. By default, Windows usually set this setting with
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 percent 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).
David Omar is an IT freelance that submits his works for many websites and blogs in these fields. He has just released a software centric coverage website at PC Software Adviser.
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