Five Methods to Fix Low Disk Space in Windows 10
Many people may get low disk space warnings from Windows 10 system, even though today's computers often have several drives with multi-terabyte options. And low disk space means low operation speed, degrade performance and bad user experience. Therefore, free up more disk space and remove the low space warnings on windows 10 is necessary. Windows 10 provides several features and functions to fix low space problems, like delete unnecessary and large files as well as some apps, videos, games to improve storage usage. In this guide, five ways will be provided to fix the low disk space problem in Windows 10, which for users who need to remove files or don't want to delete anything from their PCs.
This is the way to fix the low space problem with Windows 10 own system functions. It suitable for those whose computers have lots of unnecessary files occupied much disk space. Disk cleanup tool on Windows 10 can help you free up more space in a safer way without accidentally deleting files that you messing with the wrong folders.
Search Disk Cleanup in the search bar, click it and let it scan the disk you choose to clean, for example, C disk. Then you can find several types of files and its occupied space. You can remove it by clicking the OK button.
Storage sense is a helpful function on Windows 10, it can monitor your Disk usage and automatically delete the temporary files from the system drive and external drives, which is smarter than the Disk Cleanup tool mentioned above and can effectively avoid the low disk space problems in Windows 10.
To enable the Storage Sense function, following the steps:
Step 1: browse Settings> Systems> Storage, and you can find the Storage sense option on the right side. Turn on the toggle bottom to enable the Storage Sense.
You can see that there are other two options - “change how we free up space automatically” and “Free up space now”. You can use these two options to set how you remove files as you like.
Step 2: click the option “change how we free up space automatically”, and a new page will appear. You can set the conditions when to enable storage sense - during low free disk space, every day, every week and every month, which is very convenient to fix the low disk space issues.
For the temporary files, you can choose how many days to clean up the recycle bin and remove the files in Download Folders. Once you have chosen the time interval, you needn’t spend time deleting the files manually. And if you receive a low space warning now, you can click the “free up space now” in the bottom, you can get more space right away.
Step 3: for the option “Free up space now” which is different from the one above. If you click it, the computer will scan the disk usage of all files, you can choose to delete or save which type manually.
Note: there are explanations about the file type in the scan result. You should read them carefully before you choose to delete them. Take the Windows Update Cleanup option as an example, if you choose this one, it means you erase old copies of Windows Update files. Some users may find Windows 10 update takes up too much space, then after each update, you can delete the files here in most case. Other choices like recycle bin and temporary files are easy to understand.
Hibernation is a great feature on Windows 10, which can allow users to save their data into the hard drive when they have to shut down a computer preserving the current session. And next time they can continue the saved session. However, when you use this function, more gigabytes of space will be occupied to save the hiberfil.sys files in memory.
To fix the low issues on windows 10, it’s better to remove the hibernation function. Here is the guide to disable it.
Step 1: search for Command Prompt in the Windows bar, double click the first result, and a new black popups will appear.
Step 2: type the command “powercfg /hibernate off” and press Enter to disable the Hibernation.
During daily use, we may download and install some unnecessary Windows apps and software which can occupy much C disk space. Too many apps will low the system speed and take up much disk space. You can uninstall some unwanted apps and software to make more room for critical files.
Step 1: browse to the Settings> Apps, then you can find all your installed apps are listed on the right side.
Step 2: Windows 10 provides several options to divide the installed apps. You can classify the apps according to the standards on the right side.
Step 3: click the app you want to uninstall and the Windows will confirm with you if you need to uninstall it, just click the “uninstall” is ok.
For the most time, the disk space is limited because of the computer versions, then when you get a low disk space issue, remove the existing files cannot fix this problem. Therefore, you can adopt some external devices or services to get more space on your Windows 10. The following three methods will help you make full use of your Windows disk in a better way.
oneDrive is a cloud service provided by Microsoft, you can store your files like videos and images online instead of in your disk, which can help you save more space. Here is the guide to enable oneDrive in Windows 10.
Step 1: click the oneDrive cloud icon in the bottom-right corner of the taskbar.
Step 2: choose the More option, then click the settings option. A new popup will appear.
Step 3: click the settings tab, then choose the “Save space and download files as you use them” option. Then click the OK button.
After the configuration, you can use the function of Files On-demand to move your files to the oneDrive folder, and use them online, which no longer occupy your disk space.
Another simple way to change low disk space warning in Windows 10, is to use an external device like a USB disk to free up space. Plug a USB drive to the computer, and remove the unnecessary files like some download videos, images or doc files to the hard drive, then you can delete the original ones to make more room for your PCs.
