Tech Tip: Windoze - Recoup Drive Space On Your C: Drive

[iamjanco]

I've got an older Lenovo W530 laptop with a smaller C drive in it that was running out of free space, so I hunted down a page chock full of helpful info that allowed me to double my remaining space. Some of you may already be aware of some of the steps found in that page, but I don't recall having ever messed with what I think are called junction links (mklink, which essentially allows you to create something that works sort of like symlinks/environment variables that link the original folder to a new folder on another drive):

 

Is C Drive Full? - 13 Effective Ways to Free Up C Drive Space

 

I actually went from just under 40GB free space remaining on the C drive to just under 85GB when it was all said and done.

 

Note: One thing I should mention that's not spelled out clearly in that page about using mklink: you want to cut (not copy) the folder out of the (e.g.) C drive and paste it and its content into your preferred location on another drive, then go back and delete the content in the original folder BEFORE applying the mklink process. Once the symbolic link is established, you don't want to remove any files from the original folder (I found that out the hard way, oops).

 

 

 

 

Edited August 29, 2021 by iamjanco

[schuck6566]

2 things I did was move my music folder to another drive(over 13GB)and run disk cleanup which gave me another 5+GBs of space after doing the Windows Updates cleanup.

[ENTERPRISE]

12 hours ago, iamjanco said:

I've got an older Lenovo W530 laptop with a smaller C drive in it that was running out of free space, so I hunted down a page chock full of helpful info that allowed me to double my remaining space. Some of you may already be aware of some of the steps found in that page, but I don't recall having ever messed with what I think are called junction links (mklink, which essentially allows you to create something that works sort of like symlinks/environment variables that link the original folder to a new folder on another drive):

 

Is C Drive Full? - 13 Effective Ways to Free Up C Drive Space

 

I actually went from just under 40GB free space remaining on the C drive to just under 85GB when it was all said and done.

 

Note: One thing I should mention that's not spelled out clearly in that page about using mklink: you want to cut (not copy) the folder out of the (e.g.) C drive and paste it and its content into your preferred location on another drive, then go back and delete the content in the original folder BEFORE applying the mklink process. Once the symbolic link is established, you don't want to remove any files from the original folder (I found that out the hard way, oops).

 

 

 

 

Yes this can be a useful method, the only side affects are increased latency, not that you would notice much on media files but anything that reads a lot may see a drop in performance. That being said, this a nice and quick way to free up space.

 

Let's face it, if you are chasing performance and space, you would just swap out the drive for something more appropriate. 

[iamjanco]

2 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

Yes this can be a useful method, the only side affects are increased latency, not that you would notice much on media files but anything that reads a lot may see a drop in performance. That being said, this a nice and quick way to free up space.

 

Let's face it, if you are chasing performance and space, you would just swap out the drive for something more appropriate. 

 

Yeah, I certainly agree, especially in the case of more current gear. But now that I'm a "pensioner," I'll be putting the W530 to bed in the near future. Can't complain about it though: it made me a lot of money over the years and lasted longer than any other computer I've ever owned.

[ENTERPRISE]

On 30/08/2021 at 06:06, iamjanco said:

 

Yeah, I certainly agree, especially in the case of more current gear. But now that I'm a "pensioner," I'll be putting the W530 to bed in the near future. Can't complain about it though: it made me a lot of money over the years and lasted longer than any other computer I've ever owned.

Weird when you say pensioner...on forums you do not see age lol.