disk space in windows installation drive

[Salman Soomro]

the C drive on my pc shows 29 gb used space whereas when i check it from inside the folder including the hidden folder it shows the size of only 22 gb.. and secondly is there any effective way other than disk cleanup to free up space in the windows directory? i m using windows 8

 

[hp79]

Open up a command prompt with admin rights, and go to "c:\" then try "dir /ah". This will show you hiberfil file (needed for hibernation), and also pagefile (virtual ram). You could disable hibernation which will reclaim the amount of your ram from your C drive by doing "powercfg -h off". To turn it back on, "powercfg -h on".
After that you can also reduce the pagefile size in "advanced system settings", but that would depend on how much ram you have.
Also, disable "System protection" if you need more space too.

 

[Salman Soomro]

i have 4 gb dominator 1066 ddr2 ram... if u would just guide me in a step by step manner it would be really appreciated

 

[hp79]

i have 4 gb dominator 1066 ddr2 ram... if u would just guide me in a step by step manner it would be really appreciated

Since you have 4GB RAM, I think it's a good idea to still leave the pagefile (virtual memory) since you could be using more RAM in some cases.

To turn off hibernation and reclaim about 4GB from your HDD/SDD, press 'Start' and then 'all programs' -> 'accessories' -> right click on the 'Command Prompt' -> click 'Run as Admin'. You'll see a command prompt box with admin. Type in "powercfg -h off", then you'll see that hibernation has been turned off and you should have about 4GB extra space now.

To disable debug information logs, click "Start" -> type in "advanced system" and you'll see "View advanced System Properties" in the list appear. Click that. Click "Settings" under Startup and Recovery. Under "Write debugging information, choose (none) so it doesn't write debug information in case the system crashes.
In the same window, go to "System Protection" tab, and click "Configure". Then choose "Turn off system protection".

 

[Salman Soomro]

will any of the settings u highlighted have any adverse effects?

 

[hp79]

will any of the settings u highlighted have any adverse effects?

Disabling hibernation - Hibernate is a mode where all the contents in the RAM is stored in your C: and then powers off. When you power on, instead of rebooting from fresh, it reloads all the memory content back from the C: drive. It's like a very slow standby mode. Standby will keep your RAM powered on and everything else off, so waking up is almost instant. Fresh boot is almost as fast as resume from hibernate, especially if you have a SSD. I always disable this no matter what.

Debug information is really not needed for normal users because it's content is almost cryptic. You can choose minimal instead of none if you want to keep some information. I just disable this since it's no use for me.

Disabling System Protection saves some space too. Every time you install a Windows Update or install a new software, it'll save Restore Points. I never do a Restore using this function so I always turn it off. I do keep a backup image of my C: using freewares such as Paragon drive backup free version.

So no, all these are very safe to disable. You might want to skip disabling System Protection in case you want to use that feature though.