Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2024 June 8

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June 8

Windows 11 Storage Capacity Issue, maybe

I am using Windows 11, and I have a 216 GB C: drive. When I view the "This PC" window, it shows that I have 14.3 Gb free, and shows a red bar, which may mean that I have less than 10% free storage on the drive.

File:(deleted file)

When I last restarted the computer, it showed that I had more than 10% free. Looking at the C: drive, what I see is:

File:(deleted file)

I see that the pagefile is now 26Gb. It was 12 Gb when I restarted the computer, so the expansion of the pagefile is why I have less free storage available. My question is whether I should in any way be concerned that I have less than 10% free storage. I have 14 Gb of free storage, and of the storage in use, 26 Gb is being used for paging, and 14 Gb was a lot in any decade that I was paid to use computing equipment. So am I correct in assuming that the red highlighting of the bar is a silly non-warning warning? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:26, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Windows' paging almost doubling from 12 to 26 is a bit concerning. 18.3 GiB free (in my opinion) is fine & workable. Windows will always make the bar red when there is less than 10% free space left (and it is quite intimidating). If you want, you can manually limit the pagefile size, but I think 18 GiB is enough for short/medium-term. Of course, the more space, the merrier.

Also, side note, keep in mind that screenshots of File Explorer aren't free (no DW permitted) so they can't be uploaded to Commons. WhoAteMyButter (🌷_talk│🌻^contribs) 23:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

You are experiencing exactly the same symptoms which have plagued Windows users since Win 95. I am still using Windows XP on my main machine, so cannot offer any up-to-date solutions with any confidence, but:

1. There will be an app/utility which will find your biggest files. These could be films (avi, mp4 etc.), .pdfs etc. Do you need them? I would suggest all files with 0 bytes can be deleted as well.

2. Empty your Temp folder. Click on the Start menu. Choose All Programs then Accessories, followed by System Tools. Select Disk Cleanup. Under Files to delete, choose the files you want to get rid of. Once you’ve selected the file types to delete, click Ok. Another method: Quit all applications. Press WinKey + R. Type %temp% In the folder that opens, drag all the files to the recycle bin or select them (Ctrl+A) and click/press Delete. It won't delete temp files which are being used in the current session. Pressing Shift+Delete will bypass your Recycle bin and permanently delete these files, so beware.

3. Almost any file with a .tmp extension can be deleted as well. Use Windows Search or a dedicated file search utility. If Windows complains, it means it's being used in the current session.

3. Empty your Recycle Bin anyway.

4. Quite frankly, 12 gigabytes for a paging file is an outrageous size. Excuse me while I delete some expletives. OK, I'm still running XP designed around 25 years ago, but I have a mere 4GB of RAM, and my paging file is 200 MB, ie 5% of RAM, and Windows rarely complains. Your Hibernation file (hiberfil.sys) is 4GB anyway, so that's equvalent to your installed RAM. If your motherboard can cope, I would double that. M$ fanboys can shoot me down, and I expect the specs have changed. Nevertheless, you should definitely place a manual limit to your paging file: hunt around for 'Win 11 fixed size paging file'. You could start with 8192 MB initial and 8192 MB maximum. Unless you are heavily into gaming or video editing, and you only use your PC for browsing, document editing etc., I suspect this should be enough. BTW, I created a Ramdisk in memory (RAM) and keep my paging file on it. This saves endless thrashing on my hard disk.

5. Empty your browser cache frequently: with Firefox, press Ctrl-Shift + Delete, and select Cache only. Dunno about other browsers, a quick search should find the answer.

6. I'm sure others will have different ideas. mine may be entirely wrong. MinorProphet (talk) 16:49, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

It may be easier, if you never hibernate your computer, to turn it off, which will save you another 4GB.To do this:

1. open a command prompt as administrator

2. enter powercfg -h off

3. enter powercfg -hibernate off

Note: some sources mention needing powercfg.exe /hibernate off for the second step. It should be the same effect imho.

To undo this, replace the "off" in the command with "on".

14GB of free space should be sufficient for most stuff anyway, but storage has become significantly cheaper in recent years. A quick look on a (dutch) price-watch shows me that a 512 GB SSD from a non-budget brand is ~55 euro for an M2 type, and ~70 for a 1TB 2.5" (I can't find 512GB drives from the non-budget brands I've selected). I seem to recall from earlier questions that you're on a laptop, so adding drives might be difficult, but I suppose the better computer shops will still do this for you (or buy an external SSD-housing for ~20 euro if you know how to do so). Rmvandijk (talk) 14:05, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Please upgrade SSD to 12 terabytes . System 4TB data 8 terabyte making fattest ever also Roblox support 2001:44C8:4145:4A1E:85B5:4782:3DD3:7CD6 (talk) 11:31, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

M$ fanboy attempts to shoot me down. Ha ha, missed both my legs. MinorProphet (talk) 02:49, 12 June 2024 (UTC)