How to free up hard drive

[bell reavue]

I'm running Windows 10 on a ~5 year old laptop and noticed I only had 2 GB free on my 100 GB hard drive. I ran a disc cleaner (CCleaner) and manually deleted some old files/apps and made it to 7.5 GB free, but after rebooting my computer and browsing the internet for a few minutes it dropped down to 6.3 GB free (maybe automatic Windows updates started downloading?). 

 

According to my settings, 7 GB is being used by my documents, pictures, videos, and music (it used to be more, but I just deleted itunes). 18 GB goes to applications, and 66 GB goes to system files. 

 

I can continue to delete old documents and move pictures and stuff to an external hard drive, but is 66 GB for systems files normal? Is there anything else I can do free up hard drive space that a disc cleaner like CCleaner hasn't already done? 

[OnionKnight]

I have a fresh install of windows 10. Used up 43 GB, but the SSD that it is on installed has nothing else but Windows 10 on it. I am sure you have more junk in there.

[Xernicus]

Windows 10 uses shadow copies to keep old copies of system files after updates in case you need to "rollback" the system. They consume lots of space, but generally you'll want to keep them around.
However if everything is working good and you're short on disk space, there's an easy way to delete them.

-Open "Disk Cleanup" (The builtin tool)

-Choose C:\
-Click on "Clean up System Files" - and choose C:\ again after Disk Cleanup restarts

-Make sure "Windows Update Cleanup" and "Previous Windows Installations" (if visible) are both checked.
-Make sure "Windows upgrade log files" is unchecked. It's a good idea to keep them.
-Click on "OK", and once prompted, "Delete Files".

[RendeL]

I just couple of days ago sorted my hdd. Had same issue, only that I had 179Mb/100Gb free space.

 

I didn't even have the restore points on, but the memory cache + av program was the issue.

 

Now the terms I dont know, but you need to set cache memory to "save" on other partition of your disk. 

 

I can google it later when I have time if you dont find out it before.

 

Also zonealarm virus+firewall program did some backups or so, changed that to Avira.

 

Now I have 63Gb free space.

[Vanaraud]

If you upgraded from win7\8(.1) then maybe you still have some useful files(pics\docs) "hidden" in those system restore files. Be sure you  don´t miss anything after disk cleanup...

[Kooki]

Hey bud, dont  know much about laptops but here is a suggestion that might work if you have the money.. I use a program called Aronis true image.  This program will let you clone your present drive onto another larger drive and boot to the new drive.  By doing this you can retain all your stuff and get a larger drive for your laptop as well.  I dont know how to tell you to do it on a laptop but im sure you can figure it out.  I cloned my ssd drive from 500 gb to a 1t and it worked fine... ive also cloned one from 1t to 500g and that worked well as well.  The way i understand it is the hd is only for storing files needed so you should be able to do this and keep your present computer and os intact.  A not about clone and booting.  If you do this then you remove your old hd and put the new one in its place.  You may have to then go into bios setup and select which drive will be the boot drive because the old drive isnt there anylonger.  Good luck.