User question
Hello!
I bought a laptop in a store and at first did not attach any importance to the size of the "C: \" drive with Windows - six months later I regretted it. The disk is pretty full and the space is no longer enough: for some reason I have a partition with Windows only 55 GB in size, and now the error constantly pops up that there is not enough space left, etc.
Are there ways to somehow increase the free space on the system disk without formatting?
Good day.
In general, this is probably the most popular question regarding the system drive "C: \" - there is not enough space on it 👀.
In the article I will try to give several ways for beginners, what is the best way to proceed in this case, in order to leave the data intact (not to transfer anything anywhere), and get off with "little" blood, so to speak ...
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If there is not enough space on the "C: \" drive, you can:
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Clean the system from "garbage" Many users have never checked and cleaned the system from various "garbage" since the moment of purchase (or installation of Windows): temporary files, broken shortcuts, incorrect entries in the system registry, etc. All this not only takes up space on your hard drive, but can also seriously affect the performance of your PC / laptop. Windows has a built-in cleaner - but I see no point in considering it. It loses, probably, to all other third-party cleaning utilities 👌. * Utility # 1 Advanced SystemCare Official website: //ru.iobit.com/advancedsystemcarefree.php In my humble opinion, Advanced SystemCare is one of the best utilities for servicing Windows (removing garbage, optimizing the registry, disk, fixing incorrect security settings, searching for adware and malware, etc.). And what most captivates in this utility is that it does everything by itself, the user only needs to start and press one button "START" (see screenshot below). Advanced SystemCare - Cleaning and Optimization After a couple of minutes of analyzing your system, you will see the number of problems found: even on relatively "clean" systems, you can find garbage for several gigabytes! In general, one click on the button "Fix" - and your Windows will be clean in 5-10 minutes! I highly recommend it. Fix security issues, remove trash, close security holes Below is a report on the current health of your system (shown at the end of the work done). Care completed successfully! By the way, the full version of the utility is not free - but for starters, even the free version will be more than enough (and then try it and decide ...). * Utility # 2 CCleaner Official website: //www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download There is one more utility for cleaning and maintaining Windows that I cannot ignore ☺. It's about CCleaner. It, of course, does not look for malware and does not close holes like the previous utility, but it also cleans the system from garbage well (in the screenshot below, almost 48 GB of garbage was cleared on a system that no one has cleaned for several months). By the way, CCleaner has some additional utilities that sometimes help out a lot: CCleaner cleans out the Augean Stables! Generally, summary of this subsection of the article: first of all, try to clean the system, you may be very surprised when a dozen gigabytes suddenly become free ... ❷ Reinstall some programs / games to another local disk. Transfer part of system files Many users, especially beginners, when installing games and programs, do not even pay attention to where they are installed. By default, as a rule, all applications are placed on the "C: \" drive in the "Program Files" system folder. As a result, after installing several games, more than a dozen gigabytes can easily "go away" (and the system disk is usually several times smaller than other local ones). Simple advice : when installing games and large programs (video editors, graphic editors, etc.) - try installing them to another disk. You can also do with existing programs - see which ones take up the most space, and reinstall them on a different partition of the disk. Spend a bit of time - but free up space quickly and without unnecessary hassle. Note: by the way, pay attention to unused programs - if there are any on the disk, also uninstall them. The game is installed by default on the "C: \" drive (click on the "Watch" button and choose a different path) 👉 To help! How to uninstall a program that cannot be removed - step by step instructions About the swap file and the file for the hibernation function There are a couple of files on the system disk that can significantly "weigh" - we are talking about the swap file and the file for hibernation (if you do not use the hibernation function, then you should disable it altogether so that the file does not take up space on the system disk). As for the swap file, it is advisable to transfer it to another local disk. I talked about this 👉 in this article, so I will not repeat myself here ... ❸ Increase the partition of the "C: \" drive at the expense of another partition Well, and the last thing, if all the previous ones did not solve the problem, then you can try to "take" space from another partition of the hard disk and add it to the partition with the system (ie, to the "C: \" drive). Note: we are talking about the fact that usually the hard drive is divided into 2-3 partitions: one for the system (drive "C: \"), the second for programs, games, documents (usually drive "D: \"). It's just that it's easier to maintain a PC: if the system crashes, you can simply format the disk partition with it and reinstall the system (and user documents on the other partition will remain unharmed). The bottom line isto take part of the free space on the "D: \" drive (if any ☺), and transfer it to the "C: \" drive (see the screen below). This is done without losing data, even using Windows tools ... Disk management - taking space from one disk - giving to another 👉 To help! How to increase the volume of the "C: \" drive at the expense of the "D: \" drive without losing data - step by step instructions As for increasing the "C: \" drive with the built-in utility in Windows, in order ... 1) First you need to open the utility "Disk Management" ... Press the button combination WIN + R, enter the command diskmgmt.msc, press Enter. 2) In my example, I will take space from the "G:" drive and give it to the "H:" drive. First you need to right-click on the disk in Disk Management "G:", and select an option: Either delete the volume - or shrink the volume 3) Next, you should have an unallocated area (highlighted with a black line). This is the place - you can add to another partition of the disk, in this case, to the partition "H:" - so we right-click on it, select "Expand Volume" . Expand volume 4) In the next step, click "Further" . Volume Expansion Wizard 5) In the next step, you can also click next (note: if you add all unallocated space). Volume Expansion Wizard - Add Completely 6) It remains only to agree with the operation being carried out by clicking on the button "done" . Volume Expansion Wizard - done! 7) After a while (depending on the size of the disk, its fullness, etc.) - the size of the partition will change: in my case, it increased by 48 GB. You can work further ... 👌 Has become The space has been increased! IT WAS Disk management // before shrinking and expanding a volume Note: if you do everything correctly, the data on the disk should not be damaged! Although, I still think that the necessary documents need to be re-saved, make an extra backup (especially if you have not done such operations before, otherwise you never know ...). * That's all for now ... For the additions - thanks in advance. All the best! 👣 First publication: 09.12.2017 Correction: 02/10/2020
