Out of space for Windows (10) on C Drive but cannot allocate more from Drive D

[Mikerugg]

(Software or Hardware Board?) Hello, I’m having a real problem and even though my new laptop is under warranty they say they can’t help me. This laptop, HP 17-by2000 Laptop PC series (7EF33AV), came to me with a small C drive on Disk 0. I have not added any new software but still it has run out of space under normal operation and Windows will not function. While I ordered it with 1 TB, the C drive has used up 238 GB, so there is over 900 GB free on the D drive, but it is on another disk (1) so to the best of my knowledge I cannot expand the C drive with this space.

As I said, Windows will not function so the laptop is virtually dead. Any command I try to execute gives me the warning that there is not enough space on Windows. I have folders on my desktop with pictures and files, etc. so I figured I could free up space by moving them. So logically I plugged in a USB external drive thinking I’d just send them to the external drive, but again Windows says I need an additional 75 Gig to copy these files anywhere. I cannot do anything without getting that message. This laptop is only a few weeks old so if anyone has a work-around I’d really appreciate it. Thank you!

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@Mikerugg 

OK, so if I understand your situation:

1) Your 256GB SSD has 238GB used on it

2) There is no free space left on the SSD, so Windows refuses to work

Is this all correct?

You can't move space from "D" to "C" because they are physically different drives.

If you use a different PC and follow the instructions below, you can create boot media on USB stick. Once you boot into that, you will see there is a file manager function and you could try using that to copy some files from "C" to "D", and once you have confirmed the copy worked, remove those files from "C".  Then after you reboot, let me know and I'll provides links to utilities you can run to free up space on "C".

What MIGHT work is the following:
1) On a working PC, use this link to download and install a free copy of Macrium Reflect: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Once that is installed, use the option to create a Boot USB stick (Other Tasks --> Create Rescue Media). This creates a bootable USB stick that runs a version of Windows.
3) Boot the PC from that USB stick. To do this, try pressing F9 repeatedly while booting to get a boot drive menu, or press the Esc key repeatedly while booting to get an HP utilities menu, and select the boot menu from that
4) Be patient ... as booting from a USB stick is really, really slow
5) Once in the MR recovery environment, you can then remove the USB stick.
6) Insert a USB stick for holding data and, down at the bottom left of the windows screen are some icons. Select the one on the right to open a form of File Explorer.
7) Use the File Explorer app to locate the files you need and copy them to the the larger drive.

Good Luck

[Mikerugg]

Hello WAWOOD,

I want to sincerely thank you for the great advice and the time you took to create such easy detailed instructions. Yes, your assumption at the start of your response was correct. Macrium Reflect is a neat little program and I had good luck with it. After creating the boot USB stick I was able to boot into MR immediately. Once there I formatted another 64 gig USB stick and moved some data to that and some other data to an external drive. I did not delete any files on C at this point.

I then booted the machine as normal and something strange happened. While My Pc had a visual of the USB stick half full, when I opened it the drive was empty. I then searched the external drive for the folder I created and couldn't find that either. Bu as I said I hadn't deleted anything from C yet.

At that point I had a thought I should have had before. I had been trying to move whole folders out of C to an external drive and as you know Windows didn't have the space to let me. On a hunch I tried moving just one file and it worked. So I proceeded to move and delete one file at a time, eventually being able to move more in a batch. It was tedious but now my C drive is back down to 102gb free out of 237. I've also deleted all the crap I didn't want pre-loaded on a new PC. 

So that's about it, I just converted my 932 free gig from unallocated back to a D partition never to use C again!

Thank you again,

Michael