C: Drive running out of space

[drs j]

Hello. I have a 100GB Solid state system (Win10) disk, and a 400GB conventional D: drive disk. My C: drive is rapidly running out of space. I I use disk management software to attempt to merge the two drives, it finds two unlettered partitions that are used for system restore etc, between the C: & D: drives, and to merge the two drives need to be adjacent. Has anyone any suggestions apart from replacing the C: with a new bigger drives and starting all over again!

Thanks

Sid Katzen

 

[ubuysa]

I suspect your problem is because all of the personal folders (Documents, Pictures, Downloads, Videos, etc.) are on your C: drive and thus taking up lots of valuable space. The solution to this is quite simple, you tell Windows to move these personal folders to your D: drive. This isn't as simple as copying them across however, because Windows has to know where these folders are, so there is a specific procedure you have to use to move each of these folders. You can find that here: https://www.techsupportalert.com/co...rsonal-folders-my-documents-another-drive.htm and although it's written for Windows 7 you follow the same procedure in Windows 10 too.

The folders you typically most want to move, the ones that take up the most space, are; Documents, Pictures, Downloads and Videos.

 

[drs j]

Everything has been moved, but the C:drive is 98% full again. I have a large nearly empty D: drive, but can't merge with the system drive because if the intervening recovery partitions.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Everything has been moved, but the C:drive is 98% full again. I have a large nearly empty D: drive, but can't merge with the system drive because if the intervening recovery partitions.

You don't need to merge any drives.

You can download TreeSize to see what's using the space on the C drive and transfer it to the D drive.

Find Space Hogs with TreeSize Free | JAM Software

TreeSize Free is a free disk space manager for Windows. The software shows you the sizes of folders including all subfolders.

www.jam-software.com

As above, it tells you how to move the locations of your data libraries to the D drive.

TBH though, 100Gb for OS drive is not very big these days, you really need to get something a lot larger.

 

[Scott]

Everything has been moved, but the C:drive is 98% full again. I have a large nearly empty D: drive, but can't merge with the system drive because if the intervening recovery partitions.

What you have done is move a static copy of the files at a point in time. You will still be continuing to use those particular folders which have filled again.

The process suggested by @ubuysa changes the actual location of these folders so that when you save to them, they actually store onto the secondary drive. The fact that your drive is near empty backs this up.

As suggested 100GB is a very small drive, especially by todays standards, but if managed correctly it can work. I don't know if your level of experience in dealing with file systems would have you confident enough to replace the OS on a new drive but if you're willing to attempt it I think it would be beneficial to upgrade to at least 250GB.

If you click on the start icon down the bottom and type "Disk Clean" you should see an icon pop up called "Disk Clean-Up". If you right click on this and then click "Run as Administrator", and then select all the options within, this will clear out any update files or anything that is no longer required. It will also clear out your downloads folder, so if you need to keep anything in there be sure to move it first.

That, coupled with the documents move, will give you the cleanest drive you can have without getting into more hands-on file clearing.