Free Up Space?

F

Freerunner

Member
Just bought my nephew a Lenovo Ideapad Y700 Laptop that has a 256 GB hd with Win 10 already installed. He noticed that right off the bat, 65 GB is already being used. Was wondering if it is possible to free up more space or does Win 10 take up that much space. Do you recommend doing a clean install, even though Win 10 came already installed? What about going into Programs and Features and uninstalling programs? Since this is brand new, I thought of checking with you before we make any changes.
 
You can always uninstall the preinstalled games and apps if they won't be used. Be careful that you don't uninstall any driver software. Windows 10 only requires 16 free space when installing so this extra size is because of bloatware that OEM's put on their machines. If you want, you can post pics of the programs list and we help you determine what can be removed.
 
As John said, I would start by uninstalling all the free and trial software he doesn't need, that should free up a lot of space.
 
If you don't use hibernation you can generally free up a RAM's worth of disk space.

Open 'Command Prompt' as an admin and issue : powercfg -h off

Personally I'd take the 'nerd/picky' approach and fresh format it from a W10 ISO anyway, then you don't have any preinstalled bloat.
 
So here is a screenshot of the OEM programs on the computer, i have uninstalled a few already but I am not sure of what else to un-install.

Beers: what is the difference between hibernate and just closing the lid to the machine? I dont think that I use hibernate but I am not positive.
 

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Greetings,

Maxwell Lapekas said:
Beers: what is the difference between hibernate and just closing the lid to the machine? I dont think that I use hibernate but I am not positive.
Click to expand...

Closing the lid usually puts the PC into 'sleep' mode. This is a low power state that keeps your data in RAM.

Hibernate takes it to the next level and moves all of your RAM data to the hard drive, then turns completely off. When you power the PC back on, the data will be moved from the hard drive back into RAM.

The difference really is being that hibernate is more a 'deep sleep' and doesn't require any power to retain the session data. If you ran out of battery or disconnected it while in sleep, your session data in RAM is lost on next boot (and would be similar to starting up a PC from a usual 'off' state).

Hopefully that helps. :P
 
Likely the laptop has recovery partition too. You can delete this in Disk Management or move it onto a USB drive (I was able to move the recovery partition on my Surface Pro when it was running Windows 8, not sure if you can do that in 10). Just be warned if you need to reinstall Windows for whatever reason you'll need to get a recovery DVD or USB from Lenovo (just tell them you replaced your hard drive).

If you upgraded from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 or from Windows 10 Build 10240 to Build 10586 there may be a Windows.old folder sitting on drive C:\ that may be consuming space (basically it's the previous installation of Windows). You can delete it if you run the Windows Disk Cleanup tool and select the option to delete system files, but again be warned that if you need to roll back to a previous Windows installation you won't be able to do once you've deleted the Windows.old folder. Read this guide: http://www.cnet.com/uk/how-to/how-to-delete-the-windows-old-folder-from-windows-10/
 
If you'd like to see what's taking up the most space on your hard drive, I recommend downloading Windirstat. it is a freeware program that will map your hard drive, giving you file & directory size in one window, groups files by extension in another window & shows a graphical picture of the drive. boxes are sized relative to file size, color coded to all similar extensions, and when a box is clicked, the file tree changes to display where the file is on your hard drive. You can zoom in on the box picture (right click for menu - "zoom", "+" key zooms in, " -" key zooms out) to see the smaller files. when you click on the type of file in the upper right window all files that have that extension will high-lite. Have Fun !

WinDirStatPortable.png
 
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