What happened to all of my hard drive space on Windows Vista?

Posted February 4th, 2009. Categorized under Computers. 74 Comments

If you’re using Windows Vista, you may have noticed that the amount of free space on your hard drive seems to steadily decline, even if you haven’t really been adding anything to fill it up.

When I first noticed this, I couldn’t figure out where all of my free space had gone. After doing some searching around online, I found out that the problem mostly was caused by excess System Restore points. After fixing this, I freed up over 20 gigabytes of space on my hard drive!

System Restore is a built-in feature of Windows that allows you to “roll-back” your system to the way it used to be on a certain date. This is useful if you ever install a program that causes your computer to have a meltdown or if you make some other internal change that causes mayhem.

However, if your computer has been running fine for a while and you haven’t had any problems, you really don’t need all of those excess system restore points taking up your precious hard drive space. Here’s how to delete them:

Start > Run > cleanmgr

Open up your “Start” menu, and type “Run” in the search box. Hit enter.

In the window that opens, type in “cleanmgr”, as shown below, and then hit enter.

Run window

If prompted by the UAC, allow it to run. If you have more than one hard drive, choose the hard drive that has Windows installed on it (probably your C drive).

System Restore and Shadow Copies

Once the cleanmgr loads, select the “More Options” tab up top. In this pane, you’ll see two main functions: Programs and Features and Systems Restore and Shadow Copies. You want the latter.

All you have to do is click “Clean up…”, as shown below:

cleanmgr

Once you click on that, Windows will ask you if you are sure. You are, so click “Delete”. Be patient — it may take a little while for Windows to finish deleting the system restore points. You will know Windows is finished when you notice that the buttons for “OK” and “Cancel” change when you mouse over them. When this happens, hit “Cancel”, or hit “OK” if you want Windows to delete other files to free up space.

And that’s it! It’s a very simple process that can make a huge difference in how much free space your hard drive has left on it.

Technorati Tags: hard drive, computers, windows, vista

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74 Replies to “What happened to all of my hard drive space on Windows Vista?”

Comments:

1. Steve Ballmer

February 4th, 2009 11:19 pm

This is what we call the Mojave experience. It’s where your O/S eats up hard drive space for breakfast. It’s not a bug, its a Microsoft certified feature.

2. Robert

February 5th, 2009 12:06 am

Simple, easy and efficient. I think this is a great tip not only for begginers :)

3. Paul

February 5th, 2009 3:55 pm

@Steve: Haha, yeah, most of the features are really a bit more trouble to take care of than they should be.

@Robert: Thank you! My roommate didn’t know about this and I freed up a bunch of space for him.

4. Madeleine

February 15th, 2009 12:24 am

How do I get rid of old mail on my hard drive? Now I going to try doing a clean up the way you explained. Let you know how it goes. Aloha

5. Harry

February 15th, 2009 5:54 pm

Great, I have been looking for the answer to this problem for a while. I stupidly installed all of the language packs when I first got my computer and then tried to delete them. I could not figure out why my disk space wasn’t getting larger, but this freed 39 gigs for me. Thanks a bunch!

6. Paul

February 16th, 2009 3:30 am

You’re very welcome! 39 gigs is definitely a significant amount of space.

7. Charles

February 18th, 2009 8:12 pm

so . . . it’s not showing me the more options tab

8. Paul

February 18th, 2009 8:21 pm

@Charles: What version of Windows are you running?

9. Jack from Gamers Database

March 8th, 2009 6:38 am

Thanks for the tip … was running out of space on my HDD … this solved the problem for now. I got to get a new external drive for my laptop and solve the space problem for ever … or at least the next 6 months :P

10. Paul

March 8th, 2009 12:29 pm

@Jack: You’re very welcome — I’m glad this helped you out!

11. Dale

March 9th, 2009 9:34 pm

Hi, just type cleanmgr or “disk cleanup” in the search bar at the bottom of the vista start menu. This is faster. Lets hope that Windows 7 turns out a bit smaller.

12. Mr. Waffles

March 9th, 2009 10:30 pm

Wow..I did think I was noticing my hard drive slowly decreasing, but I thought it was just me. I just did this, and freed up 64 gigs of space. That’s a whole lot more than I was expecting, and it’s amazing

13. Paul

March 10th, 2009 1:56 pm

@Dale: Yes that’s true it does work in the search bar, but some people use the classic menu.

@Mr. Waffles: I’m always amazed at just how much space this frees up — far more than CCleaner or other cleaning programs can.

14. bob drinnen

March 11th, 2009 8:34 am

hey thanks thats a great tip!

15. Borellus

March 11th, 2009 6:17 pm

why would there be so many temporary files. I have never known a significant amount of space being wasted.

Please visit my blog.

Borellus’s latest post: Update on Crazy Bill

16. bob

March 16th, 2009 3:14 pm

@Paul in #13
That’s because people would get really pissed if CCleaner and other applications started wiping their restore points, especially if they really are needed. Those applications aren’t designed to be destructive to your needed files so that’s not really a valid comparison. For what CCleaner and “other cleaning programs” do, they do them well — as long as it’s good software to begin with, of course.

17. Charlie

March 20th, 2009 2:38 pm

Cool, I’ve never got round to doing this since I’ve always had plenty of space left on my hard-drive. It’s a 1TB drive and I had 408gb free before I tried this, afterwards I had 537gb free!

I know that’s only like 14% free up, but it’s 129gb :D

18. James

March 30th, 2009 8:22 pm

2 Charles in post 7.

When typing “cleanmgr” in the run box, a box with you drives in a drop down box may pop up first. Go ahead and select the partition that has your OS running, the target drive to delete these restor points. After a couple of seconds, the Disk clean up window that Paul is working with here should pop up. Then you should be able to find the “More” Tab. Hope this helps.

19. Mark

April 4th, 2009 6:57 pm

wow I freed up 62 gigs on my 500 gig hard drive. Thanks

20. Robert

April 14th, 2009 7:30 pm

lol if you need to do this then you also need to stop adding and removing programs so often. because it isn’t vista that makes the files in your TEMP directory its only running programs, web browsers, and windows installer/install shield. oh and FYI for those who are just waiting to jump to there feat and scream about vista, XP does this to.

lol you people need to read this because to me you sound like this
http://www.leo.org/information/freizeit/fun/cars.html

21. sankar sai

April 17th, 2009 6:30 pm

Hi.. thanks for help..

I freed up 62 gigs on my 250 gig hard drive. Thanks

22. Paul

April 18th, 2009 10:15 am

@sankar: You’re very welcome!

23. Debbie

May 4th, 2009 8:20 pm

This was an incredible help. Thanks for posting this solution!

24. Nick

June 4th, 2009 5:46 am

I have just recovered 182gb from a total of 220gb. fantastic advice – thanks

Nick

25. Suplementos

June 9th, 2009 2:00 pm

Hi, this didnt worked for me, it didnt cleaned up any disk space :s why ?

Regards
Suplementos Alimentares

26. Amy from Free Xbox 360

June 26th, 2009 8:43 am

Oh my goodness. I thought this would never work, but I’ve gained 25gb. What’s up with that? Why can’t things just work efficiently to start with?

27. Anthony

July 5th, 2009 2:41 pm

I had the same problem as Suplementos. It’s not recovering any space. It recovered around half a gigabyte and is slow decreasing. I only have about 1.4 gigabytes left on my computer. I only have a couple of programs on that hard drive.

28. Paul

July 5th, 2009 8:09 pm

@Anthony: Then it must be other stuff taking up your hard drive space besides system restore points.

29. Vasu

July 25th, 2009 4:26 am

Thanks! that recovered 17gigs of space in me HDD.

30. Dan

August 4th, 2009 10:51 am

Nope, this did not seem to do the trick. There is 29 GB on the hard drive and only about 5 GB of stored files on the drive, so there should be around 24 GB of free space, but there is NOT, only 4.38 GB?

- I have manually cleaned up space.
- RUN “cleanmgr” disk cleanup, also system restore points and shadow copies.

??? Any more ideas???

31. Paul

August 4th, 2009 3:07 pm

@Dan: You could try using the program SequoiaView to find the files that are taking up the most space.

32. Julie

August 29th, 2009 3:00 pm

Thanks for this great advice! I did have a question, why doesn’t the disk clean up do this when accessed from the start menu? I ran the same process there and it didn’t seem to work. Then when I used the run command it did. Thanks again!

33. Paul

August 30th, 2009 12:18 pm

@Julie: It should do the same thing, though by default the cleanup utility won’ clean up shadow copies.

34. TKD NiNjA

September 9th, 2009 8:08 pm

thanks man! that freed up 40 gigs on my hdd! I need that extra space, I thought I was gonna need a portable for my media, but this while by me some time til I need one. thanks a ton man.

35. Bruce from USB External Enclosure

September 11th, 2009 12:31 am

lol very nice, thats why I’m still using server 2003 (same thing as xp pro but less compatible with games but slightly more secure and faster), well until I get Dell, 3 more weeks to go ^^.

36. Stewerd

September 17th, 2009 1:44 pm

Thanks,I just freed 30 GB from my computer woohhooooo

37. Andy from Storm Shadow Costumes

September 29th, 2009 7:39 am

Hey – thanks so much for this info! When vista was first released there were a heap of strange things going on – I think most seem to be cleared up now thankfully.

38. Baz from Market Samurai

October 1st, 2009 2:10 pm

This info is top notch. Im going to try to free up some space tonight – fingers crossed!

39. Kyle

October 11th, 2009 8:48 am

This was great. Freed up 22 GB of space.

40. bly

October 15th, 2009 5:56 pm

thank you for all of the help it deleted 30 gigs of files my pc doesnt crash anymore
thank you alot

41. Sara from Professional Photo Printers

October 20th, 2009 10:25 pm

Some good tips you have posted here. Managed to really clean up my laptop hard drive. It was bogged down with so much unnecessary junk. My laptop seems to run super fast now.

42. Mike from Wireless Outdoor Speakers

October 22nd, 2009 10:28 pm

I was able to free up almost 40GB on my hard drive. This has really stabilized my PC now. I think I had a lot of bad files embedded in there.

43. John from Outdoor Speaker Reviews

October 23rd, 2009 10:38 pm

Nice post. Helped me clean up my hard drive and gain an extra 15GB.

44. Steven from Car Insurance for Teenagers

November 2nd, 2009 5:21 pm

Thanks for the great tip. I managed to really boost my HD performance after gaining an additional 35GB of space. Now all my applications opened up so much faster.

45. alex

November 12th, 2009 6:50 pm

ugh… so i have a VERY SMALL Hard-drive, 24 GB. It used to be 80 but when it broke Bestbuy gave me a 24 and i had to settle with it. I’m trying to play my favorite online game, but i dont have enough room to install the patch. Atm my comp has like 10 MB left. I’ve been lookin for ways to clean it, but not even this worked, any other ideas?

46. Paul

November 13th, 2009 2:14 am

@Alex: your best bet is probably to just uninstall unnecessary programs or buy a cheap external drive — they’re surprisingly cheap these days

47. Perry from Upright Exercise Bikes

November 22nd, 2009 9:08 pm

Great post! It helped me clean up my hard drive big time and seems to retrieve data so much faster now.

48. Patty from Baby Lamps

December 20th, 2009 12:44 am

Thanks for the information. This will really help me clean up my hard drive on my old laptop.

49. Ankit

December 23rd, 2009 1:40 am

yeah it works… thanks a lot

50. mickeypolo

January 1st, 2010 1:22 pm

well the magic worked lost 7gigs just like that….then 2 days later its mostly crept back in…just like weightwatchers…its vista….is there a way to stopit contiually doing this restore stuff?I was soproud of myself too. Thanks Mick

51. Caleb

January 6th, 2010 2:30 pm

it wont open the system restore thing plz help

52. Jerry

January 6th, 2010 9:04 pm

I freed up 177GB of space on my wife’s 180GB harddrive by removing Vista completely. It had used her entire disk to make copies of itself… Now, what kind of software makes copies of itself and makes your computer unusable? Isn’t that called a virus?

53. Paul

January 7th, 2010 11:02 am

@Caleb: It deletes the system restore points, but the most recent one should still be there.

54. Fran

January 7th, 2010 2:01 pm

I have tried ‘cleanmgr’ but when i press delete it does nothing and i can just go and press ‘ok’ or ‘cancel’ straight away. When i check the disk space none has been deleted. Do you know why this would be? I have 105 gb but only 8gb left – I have a lot of photos stored but would these take up all this space?!

55. Paul

January 7th, 2010 3:35 pm

@Fran: It could be a variety of problems, but chances are that system restore isn’t what’s taking up that space (thus, why it’s not doing anything). I recommend giving SequoiaView a shot to find what’s taking up everything.

56. Mike Taylor from Fishers real estate

January 21st, 2010 3:15 pm

Another good way to free up some space is to format your hard drive and get rid of Vista:) I had it for a while and had to downgrade to XP, I just couldn’t handle it. I have a new system coming with Windows 7 and am excited to see how this works.

57. mickeypolo

February 1st, 2010 6:32 am

Please help! I have done this several times and each time lots of space is freed up but within days it fills back up again. I’ve been told by the techie at work that theres nothing that can be done…its just the way vista is. Thanks Mick

58. Matt

February 13th, 2010 12:52 am

Wow. I just freed 20gbs. Hopefully this was the cause of my computer lagging and the fan keep going on. I thought it might have been because of the heat ( it is summer atm ) But idk. Ill have to wait and see.

59. Scott from External Hard Drives Cheap

February 18th, 2010 2:45 pm

Thank you for the very helpful tip. I was rather astonished to find my c drive almost full when I store my data and most programs on other partitions. I’m now about 24GB lighter

60. Josh from Mini Wireless Mouse

March 2nd, 2010 10:20 am

This is awesome. I have Vista and I’m starting to get sick of it. Windows 7 anyone?

61. nicole

March 6th, 2010 4:35 am

@18. James

i too face the same prob as charles.
i can’t seem to get the targeted drive to delete the restore points.
the disk cleanup manager still pops out without the more options tab.

62. Renee from Baby Footprints

March 17th, 2010 1:07 pm

Thanks for the tips. I will try it out on my new laptop that came with vista.

63. Funny Pictures

March 25th, 2010 2:01 pm

I just freed up 15Gb. Even though I kinda knew about restore-points and their futility (i’ve never used them to restore anything), I never really knew they took up so much space…

64. melvyn

March 29th, 2010 6:54 am

hi thank you for your information i was at 45gb used on hard drive now its down to 28gb computer working a lot faster now

65. Save Pdf

April 24th, 2010 11:10 am

yeah… nice post and it works… thanks a lot

66. Todd

May 28th, 2010 3:52 am

Freed up 40 GB. Thank you.

67. Robin

July 1st, 2010 4:16 pm

Amazing! Thanks so much. Went from 3.24gb of free space to 34g.

68. Barry

July 12th, 2010 5:33 pm

I did this, and yet I still only have 1.89 GB left of supposedly 11.0 GB. I don’t know what to do?

69. Peter from tool pouch

July 20th, 2010 9:54 am

I knew it! so that is the reason why after running my tune-up software, my hard drive seems like filled again! Nice tutorial

70. Richard from How To Videos

July 22nd, 2010 11:53 am

Following these suggestions is quite a good idea not only to reclaim space but to speed up your system. Much of the “extras” that get added to your system are not healthy.
Richard@How To Videos´s last blog ..Copy DVD To Hard Drive

71. Jayme

August 3rd, 2010 11:07 pm

That’s a good question… I don’t have Vista… only XP on all my machines so I can’t really specify anything. Is Vista any better than XP?

72. Alex

August 8th, 2010 9:57 pm

When I click ‘Delete,’ nothing actually happens. I let it sit for a long while, but got nothing. I’m not sure what you mean by “You will know Windows is finished when you notice that the buttons for “OK” and “Cancel” change when you mouse over them.” No change occurs in my space amount. What up?

73. ron

August 11th, 2010 2:34 am

thanks a lot!!! such a great help!!!

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