How can I keep windows from filling my SSD boot drive?

[eickers]

Hello everyone, I recently finally decided to start using a boot drive rather than using my main drive. Since I was getting ready for a rebuild anyways, I went ahead and did just this. However, before I purchased my SSD, I googled how much space windows 7 would take up. It said about 20GB and this appears to be correct from what I can tell by the folders. So, I decided to go a little minimal as I only planned on having windows installed on this SSD for booting purposes. I rebuilt, and installed windows and all my drivers no problem. My system was up and running faster than ever before. However, 5 days after I rebuilt and started using a SSD for booting, my SSD is absolutely full. I currently have 3GB left on it but last night before I did some deleting, it had 0 bytes left at all. I understand that some additional things get put on the C drive by default, but have made absolute certain that I installed everything that gives me a choice to my main storage device (a 1TB western digital hard drive). This includes the only 11 programs I have installed since rebuilding and formatting everything, my browser download directory, and my Vuse download directory. I have also added up all of the file sizes that show up on the SSD through windows explorer, including the hidden folders, and came to a grand total of 28GB. However, when I right click the SSD (C drive) it tells me I've used 51.5 GB. Just to avoid any further problems I went ahead and already bought a new Samsung 250GB SSD that I will be moving to today. In hindsight, I shouldn't have gone minimal to begin with. But non-the-less, I would like to have a better understanding of my problems with two questions:

1. Where the heck and what the heck is the the missing 23.5 GB?
2. How can I minimize what gets put onto my boot drive when I do install my 250GB SSD later today (or whenever I better understand how this works)?

Thanks for any help everyone. I very much appreciate it!

 

[saint19]

Hi and welcome to Tom's forum.

What SSD size do you have right now?

 

[eickers]

Ah, my apologies, I didn't realize I forgot to include that. I am currently using a 60GB SSD.

 

[saint19]

So...

60GB are not really 60GB at the end, you get less, about 54GB really. 54GB less 20GB of Win 7 OS are 34GB What other programs do you have? Office, Autocad? Documents?...What else do you have in that drive?

 

[eickers]

Since rebuilding I have installed:

-Steam with two games; Dark Souls 3 and Tomb Raider (I made sure Steam installed to the other hard drive along with the two games. Although it is storing my Dark Souls 3 in my app data on my SSD, so I don't know what else it put there, but I can't find anything else)
-Vuze download manager
-VLC Media Player
-WinRAR
-AVG Anitvirus (free edition)
-IP Vanish

(I know I did say I installed 11 programs in my first post, but that was just my guesstimation. This list in inclusive for sure)

Programs that were installed with drivers:
- ATI Catalyst
- Nividia GeForce Experience
- VulcanRT

I did try to install Microsoft office 2013, also ensuring it installed to the 1TB drive, but as it installed it consistently told me there was not enough free space on the drive. I can only believe it was attempting to put some data on the SSD as my 1TB drive was almost completely empty. It wouldn't let me exit out of the install so I was forced to force it closed with the application manager. I tried to find Microsoft Office in the uninstall programs list, but was not there. Any office files I could find manually, I deleted, but there really wasn't much.

 

[saint19]

So...you also changed the Vuze torrent directory to your 1TB drive right?

Go to google and download Spacemonger, run it and show us the picture with the results.

 

[eickers]

I did indeed change the torrent directory to my other drive, I haven't downloaded anything since my rebuild though.

I just ran it, definitely stupid me. I forgot about the dolphin Gamecube emulator folder I had sitting on my desktop, so there's another 2.75 GB that I promptly moved to my bigger drive.

I can't seem to figure out how to upload a picture to my comment though...

 

[saint19]

It is easy to upload an image, just use this format:

[IMG image's URL goes here [/IMG

Do not forget write a ] at the end of each IMG.

 

[eickers]

Ah, gotcha. Thank you!

 

[USAFRet]

60GB.
You REALLY need a larger drive. Win 7 is NOT "20GB"
For the original install, yes. Now appliy all the current updates.
You're looking at 40-45GB. Which is right up against the actual usable space on a 60GB drive.

Missing 23.5? That is your pagefile, hibernation, temp files, and other hidden files.

For how to redirect things from the SSD to elsewhere?
This was written especially for you:
Win 7 & 8: http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-1834397/ssd-redirecting-static-files.html
Win 8.1 & 10: http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2024314/windows-redirecting-folders-drives.html



EDIT: yup, those 2 big spaces in your image

 

[eickers]

Awesome. I kinda thought 20GB seemed fairly small for windows. Ill, be moving over to the 250GB SSD here probably tomorrow sometime when I get my new case fans in the mail. Thank you Saint19 for dealing with my novice-ness and USAFRet for confirming my SSD is indeed to small for a boot drive and the links to the posts on how to re-direct stuff. I'll definitely be giving it a read.

 

[saint19]

Awesome. I kinda thought 20GB seemed fairly small for windows. Ill, be moving over to the 250GB SSD here probably tomorrow sometime when I get my new case fans in the mail. Thank you Saint19 for dealing with my novice-ness and USAFRet for confirming my SSD is indeed to small for a boot drive and the links to the posts on how to re-direct stuff. I'll definitely be giving it a read.

Not problem. We are here to help, just let us know if you need something more.