Question No space on C drive and I can't delete anything. What to do?

[Help 555]

Hi,

Currently I have no memory left on my main hard drive and the thing is that I don't want to delete anything. I think that it doesn't even make sense because everything I delete comes back literally out of nowhere. Not even talking about new installations - they just cannot be done most of the times and even if, some of their files take up additional space even though the installation location is on a different disk.

I'm freaking out. Everything just keep crashing and doesn't work properly becauce of lack of the space. I feel like 10% of my RAM is actually working now.

I thought about changing the role of main drive to the other one but I don't really know how to do it. Windows pops up some errors, I got no clue..

SO, what I think I can only do right now is replacing the whole C hard drive. Is that the best option in that case? If so - is it even safe to my C drive?
I have a lot of important data there so I wonder if everyting will be the same after plugging it back in.. ?
Will the connections between drives like shortcuts, files related to different drives and other things like that stay the same? Will it all work?


What yall think about my situation and do you guys have other solution?? If I'm thinking right - what to know, what to take care of? Thankss in advance.

 

[Lafong]

Have you run Disk Cleanup from within Windows....including the option to include system files?

If you have to change drives, you can rather easily transfer "everything" from the old drive to the new drive. Using "cloning" or "imaging".

 

[USAFRet]

Currently I have no memory left on my main hard drive and the thing is that I don't want to delete anything.

If you are out of space, you do not have a choice.
You must delete something.

Please give us some details.

All the drives in this system? Make/model/size.
What OS?
Indeed..the whole system.

SO, what I think I can only do right now is replacing the whole C hard drive. Is that the best option in that case? If so - is it even safe to my C drive?

Cloning is a possibility. But only after we get some details.

I have a lot of important data there so

And here, this points to a deeper issue. You appear to not have any backup.
What would you do if this drive were to die right now?

 

[kerberos_20]

run this command with admin rights
powercfg.exe /hibernate /size 50
that should free up some space on your drive (hibernation will take less drive space)

you can also move pagefile to your second drive once swapfile disabled on your main drive, after reboot you can manualy delete it (c:\pagefile.sys)

- cleanup your temp folder:
press win+R and type in %temp%, click ok, delete everything inside, nothing important there

- cleanup your windows update backups
press win+R and type in cleanmgr, click ok
select your drive, click ok, at bottom click "cleanup system files", confirm UAC, select your drive again and from list checkmark windows update cleanup, this should free up few GB of space

- cleanup your system recovery points, clear all and create new fresh one
in the same app (cleanmgr),s witch to more options tab and under system restore click cleanup button, that will clear system recovery restore points except your last working one

 

[USAFRet]

run this command with admin rights

Lets find what we're working with, before going too far into a "fix".

If it is simply a 32-64GB eMMC drive that is full, that points to different solutions vs a 500GB drive that is full due to too many movies.