C Drive Full! Top Tips To Free Up Disk Space

Many Windows users are having an issue with their computer. What happens is their C drive is running out of space, and sometimes a “Low Disk Space” warning appears that says “you are running out of disk space on Local Disk (C:)”.

If you are also having this C drive full issue, you’re no doubt very frustrated. But don’t worry. You should be able to fix this issue quite easily. The following are the solutions we’ve put together to help you make more space for your C drive.

Fixes to try

1. Run the Disk Cleanup utility
2. Reduce space for System Restore
3. Turn off Hibernation

Fix 1: Run the Disk Cleanup utility

You can use the Windows built-in Disk Cleanup utility to free up space of your C drive. Here’s how you can do it.

1. Open File Explorer (by pressing the Windows logo key and E on your keyboard), then right click your C drive and select Properties.

   

2. Click the Disk Cleanup button.

   

3. Click the Clean up system files button.

   

4. Click Yes when you’re prompted.
5. Check all the items, then click OK.

   

6. Click Delete Files. Then wait for the process to be complete (this may take a while).

   

7. Click Disk Cleanup again.

   

8. Click Clean up system files.

   

9. Click the More Options tab, then click Clean up.

   

10. Check the programs installed on your C drive (if you can’t remember if a program is installed on your C drive, search the program name on your File Explorer). If there’s any program you don’t need, uninstall it (by right clicking it and selecting Uninstall).

    

This should free up a lot of space for your C drive.

There are also other ways you can try to reduce your C drive disk usage…

Fix 2: Reduce space for system protection

Perhaps you’ve turned on system protection to create restore points for your system. If so, this feature is using some disk space to store the restore points it creates. You can adjust the space it uses to make more room for your C drive. To do so:

1. Press the Windows logo key on your keyboard and type “restore“, then select Create a restore point in the list of results.

   

2. Click the Configure button.

   

3. Drag the slider of Max Usage to the left to decrease the maximum disk space usage of system protection. (This will delete the older restore points.) Then click OK.

   

4. Click OK.

Your C drive should have more space now. But if you still need more, you may need to…

Fix 3: Turn off Hibernation

Hibernating your system saves your current system state from your memory (RAM) to your C drive (as a file called Hiberfil.sys). This sometimes takes up a lot of your disk space. If you want to free them up, you should try disabling hibernation.

Note that it’s not recommended to try this fix if you’re using the hibernation feature. But if you’re never going to put your computer into hibernation, then this is how you can disable it.

1. Press the Windows logo key on your keyboard and type “cmd“, then right click Command Prompt in the results and select Run as administrator.

   

2. Type the following command line, then press Enter on your keyboard.

   powercfg.exe /hibernate off

   

Now the hibernation feature on your system is disabled, and the hibernation file is removed.

If you want to turn hibernation back on:

1. Press the Windows logo key on your keyboard and type “cmd“, then right click Command Prompt in the results and select Run as administrator.
2. Type the following command line, then press Enter on your keyboard.

   powercfg.exe /hibernate on

This should re-enable your hibernation feature.

Hopefully, one of the fixes above works for you. If you have any questions, feel free to leave us a comment below.

By Jonny Lin

Jonny, a Microsoft Certified Professional, is a technical writer and technology enthusiast. He believes technology should bring users satisfaction, not annoyance, so he writes to help people overcome their tech troubles.

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