7 ways to reduce your disk size in windows 7

If you have a SSD drive this will be more beneficial for you, if you have a regular physical spindle hard drive this guide will also help you to reduce your disk size.

Over the years the number one issue that prevents SSD to adapt wildly to a wider audience  is the lack of disk storage space. Because this people would choose to spend extra money to buy larger SSDs, or spend as less as they can to buy a SSD that can just fit for a Operating System to install. While its true there is a limited disk space with SSD, but there are few ways you can use the limited storage space wisely.

Here are 7 ways to reduce your disk space usage up to 10 GBs while preserving all your user data and programs that you have installed. Sounds too good to be true ? Keep reading and find out.

1. Disable Windows Hibernation

This will instantly give you back few GB disk space depending on how large your memory is. By default, Windows will create a hidden hibernation file that matches the exact size of your total usable memory. If your system has 8GB of RAM, by disabling Hibernation will instantly give you back 8GB of disk space on your OS partition. Check out the guide on how to disable Hibernation in Windows 7.

2. Reduce Page File Size

If you already have a relative large memory, you can reduce the virtual memory (Page File) that are being used by your system. It is not recommend to eliminate the use of Page File, but you can certainly reduce the size by manually. Check out the guide on how to reduce and change page file size in Windows 7.

3. Cleanup Services Pack Backup File

Windows 7’s SP1 (Services Pack 1) has been out for a while, by now if you have your computer set to automatically update your system. You should have SP 1 installed, if you haven’t run into any issues after the update, it’s time to delete the Services Pack Backup fileand gain your valuable disk space back. Check out the guide on how to delete Service Pack Backup files in Windows 7.

4. Reduce/Clear Browser Cache Size

Every browser will store images and contents of the sites that you always visit. Unless you disabled browser cache, by default browser will store your cache differently, for a general way to remove browser cache we recommend to use this utility called CCleaner.

5.  Migrate User Profile From Primary OS Partition to a separate hard dive/partition

If you all of the above methods are not enough for you, chances are you have too much data stored in your user profile. Usually user data (user profile) will occupy a large portion of your disk space, by following this guide you will learn how to change the Windows default User Profile location from C drive to D drive or any other partition. And by doing so, you are reducing your OS partition disk storage size.

6. Use TreeSize or Other Utility To find un-common temporary files

TreeSize is an utility to let you visually see how much storage each folder/sub folder is occupying. By doing so, if you are an advanced user, this tool will let you to find files that are unusually large hence hunt down the source of the issue and possibly eliminating those files.

7. Archive Old Files into ZIP

Yes this is old school, but it still works very well if your primary goal is to reduce the disk space usage.

And Last but not Least

Clean up core dump files after Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD), and Windows System Restore points are all the tweaks you can to do reduce the disk space size.

Update: to clean up dump files go to start menu > type “Disk Cleanup” > choose C:\ or your OS main partition

See the screenshot above, check “System error memory dump files”
                                                -aditya krishnapavan