Hard disk (C) free space getting worryingly low.

It has a little over 8 GB free of 148 GB.

I have an external hard drive which I use for saving copies of personal files. It has 135 GB free of 465GB.

And I recently bought a new, so far unused, 2TB external hard drive.

I am undecided about what strategy to employ in order to reclaim space on the C drive.

Suggestions please.

Is this a laptop? Or a desktop?

Did you do a disk cleanup? %windir%\system32\cleanmgr.exe

Clean the user temp folder C:\Users"Name"\AppData\Local\Temp (some files can't be deleted as they are in use - Skip them)

Mellon Head, it's an HP Compaq dc7900 Ultra-Slim Desktop.

Megahertz07, I run CCleaner frequently, usually before I shut the computer off, but I ran cleanmgr.exe anyway. It showed only a few thumbnails.

Did you clean the user temp folder C:\Users"Name"\AppData\Local\Temp ? (some files can't be deleted as they are in use - Skip them)

Megahertz07 said:

Did you clean the user temp folder C:\Users"Name"\AppData\Local\Temp ? (some files can't be deleted as they are in use - Skip them)

Click to expand...

Obviously cleanmgr.exe didn't, there was 74 MB in it. So I deleted them myself. There's 16kB left.

Another folder I use to clean is C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download and C:\Windows\Temp.
CCleaner does a dipper cleaner. CCleaner - Standard
If you install, go to options - Monitoring and disable all.

@ Syncopator:

With such a small C: drive it might not be a bad idea to add a second internal hard disk and move your user files there, as in this tutorial:

User Folders - Change Default Location - Windows 7 Help Forums

I do it on my machine and it saves a huge amount of space on my C: drive which is an SSD. Another technique is to install large programs to the D: drive. With my setup, I install anything that does not need to load "SSD-speed" fast onto my D: drive, again, saving more room on my C: drive for important programs. I also don't keep data on my C: drive. I keep data on the D: drive.

If you have room in your case for a second hard disk, pick up a 500 GB or 1 TB spinner, mount it and try these techniques. It will save you a lot of hair pulling. It's that or buy a larger C: drive and clone your OS.

I would buy a 128G SSD and move the C:\users folder to D:\users using Kari tutorial. As Mellon Head said, you're going to have the space of a HDD and the speed of a SSD. User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installation - Windows 7 Help Forums

https://www.sevenforums.com/attachments/general-discussion/399687d1499298283-my-computer-freezes-randomly-while-hdd-light-turns-solid-red-relocate.zip

Thank you for the suggestions.

Those articles have a lot of infomation but there's so much that I find it difficult to absorb, especially since most of it is graphics, and I get lost. I absorb the written word more easily.

I am attracted to the idea of either replacing the existing hard drive with another of, perhaps, 2TB, having first tranferred my all my personal files to an external disk. Then reinstall Windows. Or would it be sufficient to simply reinstall on the existing drive and use the external 2TB one for just storage?

External HDD are very slow and sensitive to impacts. They fail very easily. DON'T trust them to store your data, only for backup.
My suggestion is to buy a 128G SSD for Windows and programs and use the HDD for data.
As you have a desktop, the best place for a HDD, is internally to the case. (Windows and programs SSD, Data HDD and Backup HDD).

Thank you Megahertz07.

There's no rooom in the machine for an aditional disk I'm afraid.