Not enough disk space 0n Stream 14

[M_Lonabaugh]

Hello,

I am helping a friend with an HP Stream 14 and apparently you folks supplied this model with a 30GB hard drive.

This drive is to small to anything. It doesn't even have enough free space to do a windows update. 

Why in gods name did you sell a laptop with such a small drive? 

Is there a real fix for this problem?

And please do not give me any lame answers like run disk cleanup or disable hibernation. This drive is so small the laptop is virtually useless. There is nothing on it but Windows 10 and there are no files to clean up.

Please help!

Thank you... 

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

I think a lot of folks asked that question. 

I have no idea what HP was thinking when they made notebooks with 32 GB drives.

The only suggestion I can offer would be to clean install W10 by making a bootable USB installation flash drive using the media creation tool from the link below.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Make the 64 bit installation media.

When you get to the part of the installation that asks 'Where do you want to install Windows,' delete every partition on the hard drive, leaving just one partition of unallocated space.   Click Next and W10 will install.

After W10 has completed installing, you can install the drivers and available software from the notebook's support page.

Using this approach will provide the maximum amount of free drive space possible, and there won't be a whole lot of that.

I have a Stream 11 notebook where HP decided to provide a 64 GB drive, and even that isn't enough. 

In about a year, I had to clean install W10 because I only had about 5 GB of space left.

Now I have about 30 GB.

[WAWood]

@M_Lonabaugh 

You are wrong about their being no files to clean up.  Even if this PC is only 6 months old, Windows Update has been applying patches every second Tuesday of every month -- and that fills up the drive, as MS does not clean up after itself.

If you run the utilities below, they won't remove enough space to allow Updates but they will free up enough space to make the laptop useful again -- and this is NOT a "lame answer" as I use these all the time and they free up a lot of space:

Here are some things you can do to recover some of the 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/

Also, the community Win10 Forums has the following suggestions:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/83441-free-up-drive-space-windows-10-a.html

Finally, there is a freeware app known as Wise Disk Cleaner. I use it every day to get rid of junk files: https://www.wisecleaner.com/wise-disk-cleaner.html

[M_Lonabaugh]

Thank you for your assistance.

I see this question often but all I see is people suggesting you clean up files.

For some reason they cannot grasp the fact that the drive is way to small...

I am going to  take your advice, and also try to downgrade to a 32bit OS. I figure that will give me even a little more free space.

Thanks again! 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Your idea of installing a 32  bit operating system on the smaller drive is a good one, except for one problem...there may be no 32 bit drivers depending on what model Stream notebook you're working on, not even from the hardware manufacturer's websites.

If you let me know the full model number or product number of the notebook you have, I will let you know if it is doable to install a 32 bit OS.

Also, I recommend you take WAWood's suggestion to use the free Wise Disk cleaner software for action.

Wise Disk Cleaner - Free Disk Cleanup and Defrag Tool (wisecleaner.com)

I use it all the time and it cleans up gobs of useless files.  I run it once a week.  It cleans up no less than 500 MB of junk files during that period.

Another thing you can have your friend do is to run the disk cleanup utility>click on the cleanup system files button at least once a month.

When you select the cleanup system files option, it will periodically get rid of several GB of old windows update files.

On my Stream 11 notebook, when selecting Cleanup system files, I have deleted as much as 5 GB of old windows update files from time to time.   On a 32 GB drive, that is significant.