Out of Disk Space

[Linda2018]

Other than installing MS Office I have next to nothing installed on my PC other than what was installed when I bought it.  Which means pretty much nothing other than Windows.  Of a total capacity of 27.8GB of hard disk space i have only 1.47GB free.  After running every clean up and optimise function I can find that's the only space I can make available.  Does Windows 10 really need that much disk space?  I can't even download and apply the latest security patch because of insufficient disk space.  Any suggestions?

[WAWood]

@Linda2018

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

You didn't specify which cleanup routines you have run, so I would like to suggest the following ...

There may be folders on your C: drive named $Windows.~BT and $Windows.~WS. These are used by the Upgrade tool to store files needed for the Upgrade. If these are hidden, will have to change your settings in File Explorer to see them, but once you find them, then remove the folders.

Also, you may need to remove the Windows.old folder.  Here are the instructions:  http://www.howtogeek.com/223821/what-is-the-windows.old-folder-and-how-do-you-delete-it/
 
Additionally, here are some Win10 forum threads about recovering disk space:
http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/3012-disk-cleanup-open-use-windows-10-a.html
http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-clean-up-winsxs-folder-in-windows-10/

[Alex141 · Accepted solution]

Windows takes up almost 20GB (19.1GB on my laptop) and im not sure how big the HP partition is on yours if you have one because of the lack of storage space, but it normally has another 14.5GB reserved for that as well. I would recommend buying a big MicroSD card (they go up to 256gb) and putting that into the MicroSD slot on your laptop making the SD card for your files and the internal laptop storage for Windows files and programs, just save files from your programs to the SD card, the stream series simply doesnt have much storage space on them, they are mainly a web based product.

[nomisuke]

Each time Windows does an update it saves old files in "temporary" folders in case you need to do a rollback due to system instability or driver issues. Those temporary folders can fill up very quickly. In some cases, Windows Update will make a complete backup of your entire operating system (for more major updates) and place it in a folder called "Windows.old". If you have Restore set up and running on your Stream, that will also take up a significant amount of space on your drive since it is saving snapshots of your operating system each time you make a major software change. I've actually run across issues where the temporary folders, Restore files, and Windows.old folder comprises 70% of the used disk space, which is a complete waste of valuable resources. The solution to these "wasted" resources is simple, albeit somewhat dangerous. Since you are deleting backup and temporary files, it will make the process of doing a restore or a rollback impossible (not a reset, that is something completely different). However, the third option I have included here would also remove the ability to do even a reset. I cannot overstress how important it is to only attempt removing the recovery partition in order to gain space as a last resort. I personally would only attempt it if you have a way to make a copy of the recovery partition to an external drive first.

The first thing you want to do is find out how much space is being consumed with old files that are no longer in use. Go to Explorer and right-click the drive your operating system is installed on (usually C:). Choose "Properties". Click "Disk Cleanup". Since this is the operating system disk, there will be another option with a shield next to it called "Clean up system files". The shield is letting you know that you are about to delve into Administrator territory. Don't let it scare you too much. I've never had an issue with the next step. So long as you are comfortable with the way your system is running, select everything down the list from "Windows Update Cleanup" to "Thumbnails". Even as I write this tutorial, it's only been 6 days since I last performed this operation and my "Windows Update Cleanup" is already using over 5GB of space, which is just crazy. In some cases, I've seen this process actually clean well over 80GB of space. The next step is irreversible, so make sure nothing is in your recycle bin that you would like to keep and that your system is running well. Once everything is selected, click "Okay". A prompt will come up asking if you are sure you want to delete these files. If you are ready, select "Yes". This next part could take anywhere from a minute to half an hour (depending on how much it is cleaning). Once it is finished, it is time to move on to step 2.

Find your control panel. The fastest way is to type it in the search box on the lower left or hit (Windows)+R and type "control panel". Depending on your layout, either click "System and Security" then "System" (category layout) or just "System" (icon layout). Next click "Advanced System Settings" in the left pane. Select the "System Protection" tab. From here you have complete control over whether or not to use System Restore for each of your drives and how much space it will use. IMPORTANT: If you choose to turn System Restore completely off, you will lose the ability to roll back to a previous installation should anything go wrong. I highly suggest you only do this if you plan on making backups to an external drive frequently. There are several free programs you can use that will make an entire image copy of your operating system and save it to an external device. Once you have tweaked the System Restore settings to your liking, you should have freed up some more space. Finally, on to step 3.

The drive in your Stream is broken into "partitions". One of these is hidden and contains the operating system files in case you ever need to do a reset. A reset is when you've decided that everything must go and it's time to put it back to factory condition, which is what you would do if you were selling or gifting your Stream to someone. If you are in a complete bind and do not care about losing these installation files, you can wipe out the recovery partition and extend the operating system partition to fill the space left behind. WARNING: If you do this, the recovery option will no longer function. Pressing F11 when the unit starts will not take you to a recovery prompt. This will permanently and irreversibly delete the recovery files. If you decide to do this, I STRONGLY suggest making an external backup of the partition first. There are several free partition programs out there that make this less daunting as it may seem, but there are also hundreds of instructional videos on how to perform this task.

Those are my three top suggestions. Windows doesn't care how much space your hard drive has. Its priority is to make backups of everything, and those eat a lot of space. You can also try installing third party software that will remove installation files left behind by Microsoft and other programs (I use IObit Uninstaller because it has a neat little tool which will clean the Windows patch cache, which can be MASSIVE at times).

Best of luck. And be careful.