Clear out c: drive

[whs]

Kari, can you remind me why I would want to move Users to another drive. I run my desktops on 60GB SSDs and I never ran out of space. I have at east 1 virtual partition (Linux) on that drive too.

 

[Kari]

Kari, can you remind me why I would want to move Users to another drive. I run my desktops on 60GB SSDs and I never ran out of space. I have at east 1 virtual partition (Linux) on that drive too.

Wolfgang, we are old school. We do not fill the system with these strange three letter acronyms WoW, DoD and so on, I mean games. We do not have each music video published since 90's, we are used to use external drives and due our work history, we are quite used to various mobile solutions like Linux or Windows on stick and so on. We know how to utilize storage capacity.

The above is not bragging, it's just plain simple true. Yet, I use the Sysprep method; not because I want to save space on C: but to separate the complete Users folder and user profile structure from the system drive. Imaging is faster and images smaller, I exclude the drive where the Users is located from my images. I backup my user data in cloud, I don't have to include it to local backups.

Also, if the system SSD crashes, I just need to replace it, restore the latest image and with Sysprep tell that the Users folder, with all its content, can be found on drive X:.

About virtual machines, I have a separate drive for them. This is how I like it, the three highlighted drives are internal. C: only has Windows and Program Files, D: the virtual machines including VHDs, and E: the Users folder and user profiles:

​

 

[lucasbuck]

Sorry creating such a debate, but I really do appreciate the input! I'm old (and maybe old school, who knows). I actually have 11 TB worth of drives not including the SSD or externals. And I've always tried to install everything other than simple things like 7zip or something to the C:. If Win 7 can run at 60gb, I'm not sure what has balloned mine up so much unless it's things like steam files (which is all I can think of, my wife and I are old, but we play a lot of games). I can't think what else would have did it. I ran treefile awhile back and didn't spot anything, but will try the other program tonight (I remember tree took a while to run).
I really don't want to reinstall if I don't have to though, so a solution that would avoid that would be good to more user files off.
On a side note, do I have to worry about the virtual memory settings?

 

[DavidE]

Did you look at what WinDirStat shows, and it didn't help ?
You can post a screen print of WirDirStat and others here may see something that can help you.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html

 

[whs]

Thanks Kari. I get your point. I also use a separate drive for the virtual machines. It is actually part of an external SSD attached via eSata - about as full as your's.

And you are right. We have no games and big video collections go someplace else.

 

[Kari]

Sorry creating such a debate, but I really do appreciate the input!

Please Lucas (that's your name?), you have nothing to be sorry for. If a culprit must be named, let's agree it was I who started an argument, although to my defense I want to mention that I tried to spice it with as much factual information as possible .

 

[lucasbuck]

No need to explain, I really do appreciate the information I got from the debate. I waited to run WinDirStat over night just because I remember treesizefile taking a bit to scan everything, so I did them both. I've managed to clear out quiet a bit that got dumped on the c: and shouldn't have. But drilling down I have 13.5GB in appdata (7 in local and 5 in roaming).
Just for future folks who may stumble across this thread:
- ComicRack (yes, I'm over 40 and read comics). It stores a ton of images in appdata\local
- AppData\Local\Temp was pretty full. Is it okay just to delete all that out? Some said it was shared, but much of it deleted (because of course, I just deleted it before waiting for a response to see if it was okay to do so)
- AppData\Local\Microsoft has 3.6GB in Outlook and 2GB in AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows. That I will be smart on and wait for someone to tell me what I can clear out/move/whatever.

 

[Kari]

- AppData\Local\Temp was pretty full. Is it okay just to delete all that out? Some said it was shared, but much of it deleted (because of course, I just deleted it before waiting for a response to see if it was okay to do so)

It is quite safe to delete the contents of Temp folder (not the folder itself). You can do it manually or use the Disk Cleanup as told in this tutorial: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/122262-windows-7-sp1-disk-cleanup-tool.html

- AppData\Local\Microsoft has 3.6GB in Outlook and 2GB in AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows. That I will be smart on and wait for someone to tell me what I can clear out/move/whatever.

Excluding the contents of the Temp folder, you should never manually delete anything stored in AppData and its subfolders. Various applications store the application data needed for said application to run correctly.

The Outlook files for instance are probably PST files (extension .pst) and similar, they store your Outlook email messages, contacts, calendar and so on. Outlook cannot work without these files.

Kari

 

[lucasbuck]

Down to 64GB free of 150GB, so I guess that's pretty good. I appreciate all the help!