Question I only have 30GB of free space on C:, is it enough?

[Minaz]

I have a laptop that I got a good deal on. It started out with 1TB M.2/3.0 SSD (well a bit less after the conversion to decimal) of disk space, and after I installed everything I wanted on the laptop, it has only 30GB of space left. So far, it has been behaving okay, no issues. Also, I really did install everything I could think of that I wanted for right now. Its a general-use laptop, some gaming, some productivity, some photo or video editing, a bit of coding etc...

The question is, is this enough, or do I need to upgrade to a larger C: drive? Since its a laptop, this would mean cloning the C: drive, opening up the back (which can sometimes be tricky), and replacing it with the next higher up, which in this case would be a 2TB M.2. That would increase the price of course, and take some effort, so I am wondering if I should do so now to prevent problems down the road (if there will be problems, its easier to fix it now than in the middle of something I am trying to do).

Assuming that I didn't forget anything and so won't need to install anything more, do you think I can make do with 30GB of free space, or should I start planning to upgrade it because it simply won't be enough? The annoying thing about this is that there is no halfway on this - either stuck with 30GB left on a 1TB, or double the capacity to 2TB just to satisfy some swap requirements!

 

[Lafong]

You are the best observer of your performance and whether or not it is declining.

You say it's "behaving OK". That would trump any answer.

Standard advice for 30 gb free on a 1 TB drive is you are too low on free space. That doesn't mean much if you can't detect any performance decline in day to day operations.

Will the 30 gb free decline to 10 shortly? You can watch that.

You can do various kinds of housekeeping to see if you can free up more space. May or may not make a noticeable difference.

 

[USAFRet]

1TB SSD with only 30GB free space?

That is not nearly enough.
This impacts lifespan as well as performance.

A 1TB drive should not really be put over 800GB actual used space.

Install and run either WinDirStat, or WizTree.

Run as Administrator, selecting only the drive in question.
Post a screencap here.

Also, a screencap of your Disk Management window.

 

[Colif]

is that 20% going to continue into really big sized drives? Essentially you look at the size of the space you want to use and then add 20% to it to figure out the minimum drive size? I would add about 50% as most people use more than I do. I have more than I will ever use. 4gb is overkill for me.

 

[Minaz]

I heard that SSDs are overprovisioned, but again for large drives, maybe this is not as true? I have no idea since there is almost zero info on this on the Internet.

 

[Minaz]

Thank you. Your answer has pushed me over the pain threshold and I decided to spend that $100 to get a larger drive and just end this already 😛 Sometimes it takes someone telling you so. And I could just not be bothered to spend hours to save a few GB if that, I have done that before and just... $100 is okay. Thanks for making me see that.