Vista hardrive space

Search related threads. Remove From My Forums. Answered by:. Archived Forums. Windows Vista Setup. For deployment issues, please use the Windows Vista Deployment and Imaging forum.

Sign in to vote. The initial install of Vista used 12GB of space. After installing updates and device drivers, the space used is at I am installing Visual Studio and it will barely fit. I suspect I will not be able to install SP1. Why would space used have gone up 10GB after installing Vista updates? Can I reduce the space used? Note Memory RAM and hard drive space are two completely different things.

Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10, and 11 users. Windows 95, 98, NT 4. Windows 3. Linux and Unix users. Tip If you would like to view additional information, right-click the drive and select Properties from the drop-down menu that appears. And this was the result:. Windows XP or Vista is able to compress any file on the fly, and will indicate it by turning the file name blue.

When you compress a file or folder, the file will look and behave exactly as before. For anyone that believes this claim is false, I specifically looked this up through many sources, and having tested it myself, it does not produce any slowdowns. First, right click on a folder or file of your choice and choose Properties, then click on Advanced. Click on Apply and this window should come up: This is simply asking you if you want to apply compression to the folder only, or if you also want it to compress the folders inside and the files within.

Choose an option, click OK and your computer will do its work. Depending on the number of files and size, compression may take a while. Once it is finished, you can right click the folder and choose properties to see how much your folder was compressed. About 30MB, which is not too bad for a couple of word documents and other files. Empty the Recycle Bin Follow these steps to empty the recycle bin:. From the Windows desktop, double-click Recycle Bin. Restore any mistakenly deleted items by right-clicking each file, then selecting Restore.

Windows removes the contents of the Recycle Bin from the hard disk C: is most common. Delete temporary files and directories This step increases hard disk space and reduces the time Windows takes to access the hard drive. Windows uses a TEMP directory to temporarily store files intended only for temporary use. Over time, these files can build up and cause problems. To delete these files, use the following set of steps depending on the Windows version:.

Windows Vista Close all open software programs. The Disk Cleanup Options window opens. Figure : Disk Cleanup Options. Click My files only or Files from all users on this computer. Select the drive you want to clean up, and then click OK. A message appears telling you that Disk Cleanup is calculating how much space you will be able to free on the drive you chose.

Figure : Disk Cleanup progress indication window. Place a check next to the types of files you want the Disk Cleanup utility to delete. Temporary files are safe to delete. Figure : Disk Cleanup. Place a check next to the types of files you want the Disk Cleanup tool to delete. Figure : Disk cleanup. Select Y , and press the Enter key to confirm. TMP and click Find Now. A list of matching files displays.

Click Select All from the Edit menu. Press Delete and select Yes to confirm. Some items might not be deleted because they are in use. Defragment the hard drive The Disk Defragmenter utility takes all of the scattered bits of program data and groups them together in more efficient areas of the drive.

A defragmented hard drive has more free space.