Releasing Disk Space
My daughter is using an old Laptop with a very small (by today’s standards) hard disk. She has filled it up with music to load onto her iPod, and it keeps complaining that it’s running out of space.
She has done Disk Cleanup –
Open My Computer
Right click on the C:/ drive
Left click Properties
Select the General tab
Left click Disk Cleanup
but after the first time it doesn’t help much.
But there is a further option here that can release a lot of space if you are confident that you are not going to want to restore your computer to an earlier state.
After you have opened Disk Cleanup you can select the More Options tab and then go down to the System Restore section. Left click on Clean up and then left click Yes to delete all but the most recent restore point.
ONLY DO THIS IF YOU ARE AWARE OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING. I ACCEPT NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOU NO LONGER BEING ABLE TO RESTORE YOUR PC TO AN EARLIER STATE.
This released a lot of space on my daughter’s PC – but it will fill up with restore points again if you don’t reduce the maximum amount of space that System Restore can use:
Hold down the Windows key and press Pause/Break.
System Properties will open.
Left click the System Restore tab
Move the Disk space usage slider to the left.
How far you move it is up to you - but my previous warning also applies here!
Back in the More Options part of Disk Cleanup you might also want to investigate the other two sections – Windows components and Installed programs.
There could be more savings to be made here, but be aware of what you are doing – if you haven’t got the installation disks then you will not be able to restore the components and programs that you delete.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! Again!
Tags: break_system, disk_cleanup, disk_space_usage, hard disk, ipod, old_laptop, options_tab, restore_point, running_out_of_space, system_restore, Windows
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