How to Free Some Hard Drive Space
by David Omar
"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 that Windows will set by itself the space that is required every an
application requests a virtual memory.
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.
More Windows Tips:
• Windows Desktop Themes
• How to Add or Remove Items from Send to Menu
• Customize Internet Explorer's Security
• Why My Office Files Do Not Open
• Cover Your Tracks in Internet Explorer
• Configure Your Keyboard's Typomatic Functions
• Disable Cutesy Effects to Speed Up Windows XP
• Most Useful Keyboard Shortcuts
• Use ReadyBoost to Improve PC performance
• Change Explorer's Thumbnail Size
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