Lost memory on the hard drive. Where does memory disappear from drive C?

Useful tips

The problem with the disappearance of free space on the C drive is one of the global ones for all users working on operating systems of the Windows family. Most owners of personal computers and laptops approach solving the problem rather strangely, sending their equipment for repair to a specialist or service center. The service is not free. But any user who has the Internet and the desire at hand will not have to make much effort to clean it themselves. The purpose of this article is to answer the question “where does the memory disappear from drive C?” Ways to solve the problem are also presented here.

Ignoring additional partitions

In most cases, the user’s laptop or personal computer has a modern hard drive (maybe several drives), which is divided into at least partitions C and D. As often happens, the memory on drive C is reduced, and drive D is empty. It is enough to transfer music, movies, photos and documents files to an additional partition, and the problem will be solved. It remains to clarify where all the user’s files are hidden on drive C.

Desktop. In 100% of cases, it contains more than one gigabyte of files. Because of this, memory disappears on the C drive. For ease of access, directories with data can be moved to an additional partition, and then shortcuts can be made from them and placed on the desktop.
"Downloads" folder. All browsers store documents and multimedia downloaded from the network in it by default. It is located in the user’s profile, which can be accessed through “My Computer” - “C:\Users\Profile”.

For torrent lovers

Many computer owners download movies in high quality using Zona or Utorrent programs. After viewing them, users do not delete them, remaining on the distribution. As a result, not only the memory on drive C is clogged, but also the Internet. In the program settings, you need to look at where the files are uploaded, follow the link and delete unnecessary ones. In the future, after watching films, correct deletion is recommended. By right-clicking on the file name in the program, select deleting both the torrent and the downloaded file.

Alternatively, if you want to keep the movie in your collection, in the download program settings you should specify the path to an additional drive, for example “D:\torrents”. This solution will eliminate the problem of running out of free space on the C drive.

Windows restore checkpoints

A wonderful feature in the operating system allows all users to restore it to the last successful boot if Windows was disrupted by viruses, incorrectly installed software or drivers. But there is also another side to the coin. When recording points, it stores them in its system folder, and accordingly, it eats up memory on drive C. There is no need to reduce the space reserved by the system for recovery points, much less disable this function altogether. It is enough to clean it every six months.

To enter the service menu, you must perform the following sequence of actions. “Start” - “Control Panel” - “System” - “Advanced system settings”. Select the “System Protection” tab and, placing the cursor on drive C, wait for the “Configure” button to become active and click it. In the window that appears, you can familiarize yourself with the occupied space of the recovery points and, accordingly, delete them using the button of the same name. After eliminating unnecessary files, it is recommended to return to the previous menu and click the “Create” button so that there is at least one recovery point.

Swap file

Another useful Windows feature is designed to increase system performance. Without going into details, it is used as a RAM assistant. By temporarily dumping unused data onto the hard drive, the system frees up memory for its needs. The paging file size is fixed, set either by the user or by Windows automatically. Due to incorrect

To configure the capacity of this file, you need to go to settings: “Start” - “Control Panel” - “System” - “Advanced system settings”. Select the “Advanced” tab. In the “Performance” section, click the “Options” button. In the window that opens - “Advanced”. Click the “Change” button in the “Virtual Memory” section. At the very bottom of the window that appears there is information about the current size of the paging file and the recommended size. For drive C you need to specify the recommended setting, and for other drives you need to disable the paging file. The initial size and maximum size can be the same.

Sleep mode

Many have noticed that when the user is inactive, the monitor screen fades. This way the system goes into sleep mode, from which it can be woken up by moving the mouse. On laptops this feature is useful when running on battery power, but on a personal computer it is not needed. Sleep mode can be disabled, because it causes memory to disappear on the C drive due to the fact that the entire contents of the RAM are written to the hard drive for storage. We go along the path “Start” - “Control Panel” - “Power Options”. Select the “High Performance” item and in its settings indicate that you should never put it to sleep. After saving and restarting the computer, it is recommended to go to the paging file settings and adjust its size, because it also reserves space for sleep mode, which was disabled.

Clearing cache

When installed, all modern browsers are not configured to independently clear the history of visited pages. Accordingly, the more time a user spends on the Internet, the faster memory disappears from drive C. This is quite natural. Cleaning can be done in two ways. The first is to go to the browser settings and find the section responsible for storing data on the media. In this section of any browser there is a “Clear” button. The more information accumulated during operation, the longer the cleaning will take. You need to be prepared for this, because the process may take more than one minute. During the cleaning process, it may seem that the browser, and the entire system, has frozen. This is not true, it’s just that the cache is written on the hard drive in more than one place and it takes a lot of time for the system to search for this data. The second method is more interesting, since it is performed by a professional program that “knows” a lot about unnecessary resources of the Windows system and will find where the memory from the C drive goes.

Global from garbage

A software called CCleaner should be installed on every PC and laptop user. This wonderful free creation of programmers is designed not only to clean systems of unnecessary files, but also to fully manage operating system resources. The program will give detailed information about where the memory from drive C goes. All actions in the program are designed to improve computer performance. The program is available for download directly from the developer’s website, which eliminates the presence of viruses and spyware in it. After launch, the user will have access to the “Cleaning” menu, from which to start. In the Windows and “Application” bookmarks, the developers have noted the data that needs to be deleted, but it is recommended to uncheck the “Passwords” and “Journal” boxes so that after cleaning you do not have to look for login data for social networks again. After analyzing and cleaning, you can find more than a dozen free gigabytes on the active disk.

Duplicate files also take up space

A fairly popular problem among users is copying, instead of moving, multimedia files and documents. Because of this, the memory on drive C is filled. The CCleaner program allows you to find and delete all duplicate files on your computer. To do this, in the “Service” section there is a “Search for duplicates” item. You need to be very careful with it, because duplicates are also found in the “Windows” and “Program Files” system directories, which should not be deleted. The “Exceptions” item will help you get rid of problems with system files, where you can specify paths that will be ignored by the program during the search. The search for duplicates has fine-tuning, for example, you can specify the size of the searched files. By narrowing the search to one gigabyte, you may find the same movie recorded twice. After removing it, the question of where the memory disappears from drive C will be resolved.

Removing unnecessary programs

Over many years of using a computer, during which the user installed a large amount of software, there may be a dozen applications that have not been used for a long time. Because of them, memory is also lost from the hard drive. Correctly removing unnecessary programs using CCleaner will free up free space on your active media. To do this, just go to the “Service” section and select “Uninstall programs”. Go through the names in the list and delete unused applications. Before uninstalling, it is recommended to clarify the purpose of the program by entering it into the browser search bar. After all, system applications are also reflected in the list.

Finally

Having found out where the memory on drive C went and deleted it, you should use the services of applications to clean the registry, or rather its integrity. After all, the Windows system created a shortcut for each deleted file or prescribed certain actions for itself to open it. CCleaner has a built-in registry cleaner. They are to be used. By going to the “Registry” menu, the user needs to analyze and correct. During the correction process, the program will prompt you to make a backup copy. It is quite reasonable to save the backup registry on the system disk, specifying the path to any directory. But most specialists do not see the need for this, so it is up to the user to decide whether to make a copy.

Greetings to one and all! There is never too much free space, and this can absolutely be confirmed by any owner of the 16 GB version of the iPhone (the author of these lines is in your ranks!). However, owners of other Apple smartphones (those with more capacious internal storage) also probably do not want the memory in their device to disappear without a trace.

And it can really disappear even when, as it seems to you, you are not doing anything with the gadget at all. Just use it in “normal mode”, and the space is gradually reduced. Do you think this is all fantasy and this can’t happen at all? This is where I will probably disappoint you very much - as much as I can! Let's look at the reasons for such leaks, and also find out the most important thing - how to deal with them?!

Are you ready? One, two, three... let's go! :)

Lost memory after updating or restoring iOS

With enviable consistency, Apple releases firmware that makes our lives better :) But, unfortunately, it is not always possible to update by directly installing new software (there are many comments with problems), and you have to “roll” the firmware through restoring the iPhone. Restored, set up an iCloud backup, go to the storage usage statistics and see how precious megabytes are leaking away every minute...

Cause

It’s very simple and obvious - iCloud backup is not restored instantly. It seems to you that the copy has already been downloaded to the device, but in fact this is far from the case. And the recovery process may take more than one day (here, of course, everything depends on the Internet speed and the amount of data).

Every minute, the iPhone downloads information from the “cloud” and transfers it to itself. At the same time, you will not necessarily see this data - it could be message history, cache, and other service information. Visually, all this is not visible, but nevertheless, the download to the device continues and the memory is slowly decreasing.

How to fight

You can simply turn off iCloud in settings, but is it worth doing? It is important to wait until everything is loaded to the end and then the place will stop disappearing anyhow. It's not always true and here's why...

Where does memory disappear while using iPhone?

iPhone memory may decrease during normal use of the phone, even if you do not download any applications or programs, take photos or shoot videos. Where does the free space go? And here's where:

Messages and correspondence in various instant messengers - iMessage, WhatsApp, Viber, etc. Nowadays communication is becoming more and more diverse; various multimedia information is being added to the text. Where is all this stored? That's right, in the phone's memory. We received a couple of messages with audio-video attachments, so that’s minus a few megabytes.
Application and browser cache. Most programs, during use, store data downloaded from the network in their memory. We scrolled through the message feed in the VK client, some data was cached and the size of the application increased slightly, which means the amount of internal memory decreased. It would seem that they did nothing, but the free space disappeared somewhere. And so with almost any application.
Failures in the operation of various programs, which leads to their “growing” to indecent sizes. Hello, WhatsApp from early 2016 :)
Sometimes, when the volume is quite large, there is the so-called « diagnostic information”, which is accumulated in the device and must be transferred to iTunes during synchronization.
iOS has « A wonderful feature is that the system downloads its own update independently and without warning. And the size of this update can vary - from tens of megabytes to several gigabytes. And the most important thing is that until the new firmware is downloaded, you simply won’t see it. Everything naturally swings slowly and the memory on the iPhone disappears just as slowly.

« Thanks to all this, a situation may occur when not a single program or game is installed, and there is no free space left. Is it possible to fight this? Certainly! And now I’ll tell you how...

How to prevent memory loss on iPhone

Here are some tips that will help not only free up memory, but also make it stop disappearing on its own:

Attention, bonus! Available on iPhone - worth using!

As you can see, there is still no need to talk about the fact that the iPhone reduces memory on its own (unless it downloads the update - but that doesn’t count :)). For all these « leaks" there are objective reasons and they are quite easy to fix - all you have to do is not be lazy and try all the options.

P.S. Would you like to tell us about your situation? Do you have any questions or questions? Be sure to write in the comments - we’ll try to figure it out together!

P.S.S. We put « like”, click on the social network buttons and get + to the free gigabytes on the device. This is so cool that you should definitely try it! :)

Good day.

It often happens that no new files seem to have been downloaded to the hard drive, but space on it still disappears. This can happen for various reasons, but most often space is lost on the system drive C where Windows is installed.

Typically, such loss is not associated with malware or viruses. Often the fault is with the Windows OS itself, which uses free space for various types of tasks: space for backing up settings (to restore Windows in case of failure), space for the swap file, remaining junk files, etc.

We’ll talk about these reasons and ways to eliminate them in this article.

1) Where does space on your hard drive go: searching for “large” files and folders

This is the first question that is usually faced with a similar problem. You can, of course, manually search for folders and files that take up the bulk of disk space, but this is time-consuming and not rational.

Another completely different option - use special utilities to analyze occupied space on your hard drive.

There are quite a lot of such utilities, and I recently wrote an article on this issue on my blog. In my opinion, a fairly simple and fast utility is Scanner (see Fig. 1).

2) Configure Windows recovery options

In general, having system backups is good, especially when you have to use a checkpoint. Only in cases where such copies begin to take up more and more space on the hard drive does it become not very comfortable to work (Windows begins to warn that there is not enough space on the system disk, and this problem can also affect the performance of the system as a whole).

To disable (or limit HDD space) the creation of checkpoints, in Windows 7, 8, go to the control panel, then select “system and security”.

Then go to the "system" tab.

In the sidebar on the left, click on the “system protection” button. A window should appear “ Properties of the system"(see Fig. 3).

Here you can configure (select the drive and click the “Configure” button) the amount of space allocated for creating recovery checkpoints. Using the setup and delete buttons, you can quickly regain your hard drive space and limit the number of megabytes allocated.

By default, Windows 7, 8 includes recovery checkpoints on the system disk and sets the value for the occupied space on the HDD to around 20%. That is, if your disk volume on which the system is installed is, say, 100 GB, then about 20 GB will be allocated for checkpoints.

3) Setting up the swap file

The page file is a special place on the hard drive that is used by the computer when it does not have enough RAM. For example, when working with high-resolution video, highly demanding games, graphic editors, etc.

Of course, reducing this page file can reduce the performance of your PC, but sometimes it is advisable to move the page file to another hard drive, or set its size manually. By the way, it is usually recommended to set the page file to approximately twice the size of your actual RAM.

To edit the swap file, go to the advanced tab (this tab is next to the Windows recovery settings - see paragraph 2 of this article above). Further opposite speed Click on the “Options” button (see Fig. 5).

Rice. 5. System properties - go to system performance parameters.

Rice. 6. Performance parameters

After this, you need to uncheck the box next to “ Automatically select paging file size» and set it manually. By the way, here you can specify the hard drive to place the paging file - it is recommended to place it not on the system drive on which Windows is installed (thanks to this, you can speed up the PC somewhat). Then you should save the settings and restart the computer (see Fig. 7).

4) Removing junk and temporary files

Such files usually mean:

Browser cache;

When you view Internet pages, they are copied to your hard drive. This is done so that you can quickly load frequently visited pages. After all, you will agree that it is not at all necessary to download the same elements again; it is enough to check them with the original, and if they remain the same, load them from disk.

Temporary files;

Folders with temporary files take up the most space:

C:\Windows\Temp

C:\Users\ Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp(where "Administrator" is the user account name).

These folders can be cleaned; they accumulate files that are needed at a certain point in the program’s operation: for example, when installing an application.

Various log files, etc.

Cleaning all this “good” manually is a thankless task, and not a quick one. There are special programs that can quickly and easily clean your PC of all kinds of “garbage”. I recommend using similar utilities from time to time (links below).

Cleaning the hard drive -

The best PC cleaning utilities -

Even Anti-Viruses can take up space on your hard drive... First, check their settings, see what is in quarantine, in the report logs, etc. Sometimes it happens that many files (infected with viruses) are sent to quarantine, and it is sent to its queue begins to take up significant space on the HDD.

By the way, in the year 2007-2008, Kaspersky anti-virus on my PC began to significantly “eat up” disk space due to the “Proactive Protection” option being enabled. In addition, antiviruses have various kinds of logs, dumps, etc. It is recommended that, if you have a similar problem, you pay attention to them...

The present time is truly considered the age of high technology. Nowadays you won’t surprise anyone around with a hard drive several terabytes in size; it has become a common occurrence. But, unfortunately, although progress is developing, the list of problems of the modern user remains unchanged. The main problem is HDD space. There is always little of it and it always runs out very quickly.

Nowadays you can download various programs on the Internet that allow you to:

save space on HDD;
remove unnecessary information;
clear the entire computer of unnecessary information;

There are paid programs and there are free ones. What to choose?

Free ones are a freebie, but usually not effective.

Paid - buying a pig in a poke, you can run into fraud and waste your money.

It’s better to start using PSEUDO free programs for cleaning your computer and HDD. Pseudo-free is when you are given some time (often only 30 days) to use the program and use its full functionality.

But in this article I would like to discuss the basic methods of freeing up space manually, as well as consider some free utilities and programs.

If we want to quickly solve the problem with the C drive, then we proceed to familiarize ourselves with and purchase the necessary commercial software that professionally does everything you need for you.

Where does free memory disappear from drive C?

Let's first find out where the free memory disappears from the C: drive, and how to deal with it. It must be said that the space disappears not only due to the active activity of the user, who downloads and installs various programs, but also due to the operation of the operating system.

Often the HDD space is filled with various desktop contents. Remember, everything that is on your desktop is saved by default to the C: drive. If you downloaded the latest movie or album of your favorite musical group and decided to leave it all “in front of your eyes,” then the memory will inexorably decrease. If the device has several disks, then you can transfer information to another without additional tools. It happens that the HDD has only one partition. First you need to divide it into several logical parts and perform the process of moving information.

Temporary files also “eat up” some space on the HDD. They are created automatically by the programs you are working with right now; such files are necessary until you finish working with the program. The safest option is to delete files immediately after they are needed. It often happens that everything is not as good as you want, gradually they gather and take up more and more space. Don't forget that if you are a user, then files from the Internet also tend to accumulate.

It also happens that there is simply a catastrophic lack of memory on the device, and it is simply impossible to delete some programs due to the constant need for work. What to do in this situation? You will get the answer by reading further in this article.

Before you start freeing up memory, it's worth doing some preparatory work. This will be required for everything to be successful and give the desired result. For clarity, we recommend writing down the amount of free space on paper and updating this data at each cleaning stage. At the end of the process, you will be surprised how much memory you saved without unnecessary sacrifices.

Deleting temporary files

Let's move on to the action of cleaning the computer from temporary files.

First, go to “My Computer”, select the required folder and click “Service”, after which you need to click on folder properties. Next, you need to go to “View” and in the window that opens, select “Options”, where you select “Show hidden files”. All this is necessary to clean up temporary files. Confirm the new settings.

If Windows 7 or Vista is installed on your computer, you will need to click “Start” and then select “Settings Panel”. In the window, find an icon called “Folder Options.”

Let's move on to the next step. Select “Start” again and find the “Run” button, in the window that opens, enter the following characters: %USERPROFILE% and confirm. As a result, a new window should open in which you should find a folder called “Local Settings”, then select “Temp”. In the window that opens, press the combination of the Ctrl+A and Shift+Delete buttons.

Confirm your choice. This way, you will delete all the contents and it will not be moved to the Trash. Don't worry about needing these files, they are not necessary for you at all.

It is worth saying that during formatting a situation will necessarily arise with repeated confirmation of the choice. In the window that opens, click to confirm your choice. If an error window appears, don't worry, confirm. Find the file that caused the error and deselect it. After completing these steps, you can delete all remaining files again. Answering the question why the error occurred, it is worth saying that we are trying to clean up the files that the operating system uses.

Now we can see the contents of the Temp folder. The number of files in it should be minimal. Let's look at Properties and how much memory has actually been freed.

The number can be simply staggering. There are cases where the memory increases to 20 GB, if you have never cleaned this folder before. Imagine how much space you gained by deleting only temporary files, and there are other ways to free up space.

The next stage of cleaning your computer is as follows: open “My Computer”, select the C: drive. Select the “Windows” folder and select “Temp” again. Please note that if you want to access, a warning may appear, you click "Display all content". You don't have to worry that if you delete the contents of this folder, you will disrupt the operation of the operating system. In fact, it stores files for compatibility between the system and older programs. Although the folder may be almost empty, cleaning is necessary. To do this, select all the contents again using the Ctrl+A combination and delete them.

Let's move on to the action of cleaning temporary files that appeared while working with the Internet. You need to go to “Start” and go to the settings panel, where you select the “Internet Options” icon. Click delete in the window that opens. A new window will appear in which you need to check the boxes next to “Temporary files” and “Save node data”, click “Delete”. This method is most effective for Explorer browser users. If you are one of them, see after this operation how much space you have freed up.

After all these steps, you need to empty the Trash. Files that you deleted may accidentally be moved there. We hope you don't have anything valuable stored there.

Removing duplicate files using the DupKiller program

Next, to clean your computer you will need a special program called DupKiller. It will help you delete copies of files that may be found on your computer. The program is completely free and you can download it from the developer's website. Perhaps in the near future you will have to pay for this program, but for now it is free and you can use it safely and without problems.

After downloading, you need to install the program. During this, select the desired language and click “Next”, accept the terms of the “User Agreement” and click “Next”. Wait for complete installation and confirm.

Go through “Start” and select “Programs”, in the window that opens, click on the name DupKiller. This program is also convenient because it offers pop-up tips that you can easily turn off. As a result, you should see the main window of the DupKiller program. You can check the box next to drive C or all of them at once. Select “Files” from the menu and click “All files”.

Go to the “Exception” menu. You can leave everything in this folder as is. In this case, you will see how the program works. In “Search Settings” and “Others” leave everything unchanged.

Go to “Delete” and select move to “Trash”. This is necessary in order to prevent the loss of important information. If you have no doubt, you can delete it immediately. Now click “Scan” and all you have to do is wait. At the end, a window will appear in front of you, which will indicate the total volume of duplicates on the computer. The amount of memory that copies occupy can be very large.

Then the fun begins. You need to check the boxes on all files that can be deleted; you do not need a duplicate. Please note that the checkbox is checked only for one copy, and not for all, otherwise there is a high probability of deleting the original.

Defragmenting your hard drive

Another way to clean your device of unnecessary information is defragmentation. This operation optimizes the location of files on the hard drive, and also compresses files that have not been used for a long time. All this will save some space on your computer.

To get started, go to “My Computer” and select C:. Go to “Properties” and click “Tools”, in the window that appears, click “Defragment”.

In the window that opens, click “Defragmentation”. After all this, you can calmly go about your business, for example, cleaning or spending time with friends. It is recommended to carry out such measures on average once every six months, possibly more often if you actively use your device. During this process, working on the computer will be simply impossible, due to the fact that it will work very slowly.

By the way, you can always delete programs that you have not used for a long time or do not intend to use in the near future. Agree that you often downloaded a program “once”, and then forgot about its existence, and it takes up space on your computer.

More emergency methods of freeing up space are also used. This method should be used after all previously proposed methods have been tested. If you have deleted everything you can and the space still hasn’t appeared, you will have to purchase a new HDD. In this case, we throw all the information that does not fit onto it. In addition, all new files will be transferred to it. But do not forget to delete temporary files from the new disk over time. But it happens that there is neither time nor money for acquisition. How to get out of the situation?

Compressing information on disk

There is also a method of compressing all the information on the disk. To do this, you need to go to your HDD and select “Properties”, in the window that appears, click on “Compress disk”. Next you need to confirm your choice. In the pop-up window, apply your selection to all folders. This procedure will last a maximum of half an hour, and a minimum of about ten minutes.

Let us remind you that this method is not a salvation, but an emergency measure. Why is that? The disadvantage of this method is the slow operation of the entire computer. This is due to the fact that when performing operations, the system must initially unpack the file, and only then begin working with it. The unpacking process begins to significantly reduce the speed and performance of the machine. We recommend that, even if you have used such a drastic measure, try to return your device to its normal state as soon as possible. Only after this the performance will increase significantly.

In this topic, you learned the easiest methods to increase memory on your device. We hope that by adhering to them and constantly cleaning your car, you will not need emergency methods in the future. So for now, start with regular computer and HDD optimization programs.

Question from a user

Hello.

Help me decide on one problem: every day I have less and less free space on the system disk where Windows 10 is installed (local drive C:\).

Is it possible to somehow limit the appetites of my system, and in general, how to find out where the disk space is disappearing, are there special utilities for this. Thank you in advance!

Good day!

A familiar problem. You look today, 2 GB are missing from your hard drive, tomorrow - another 2-3 GB, in a week - 10 GB are gone... You involuntarily begin to wonder what will happen in a month - there will be no free space left at all?

It’s probably worth saying right away that this rarely happens because of viruses, more often because of certain settings of the Windows OS itself: an excessive number of restore points, because of the browser cache, and various “garbage” that accumulates on the system partition. In this article I’ll tell you how to get rid of it and free up disk space.

To help!

You might be interested in utilities for cleaning Windows from garbage -

By default, Windows is enabled to create (except, perhaps, Windows 10, and even then if we don’t touch on the topic of assemblies). So, these recovery points can take up to 12% of the space on your hard drive (and on each partition!). Agree, if you have a system partition of your hard drive with Windows, say, 200 GB, then giving about 25 GB to recovery points is too much?!

Note: I do not advocate working without restore points at all, but it is quite possible to reduce the ardor of the OS. Moreover, it is not the number of points that is important, but the quality.

And so, to configure the location for recovery points, open: and open the tab (screenshots below to help).

Next, select your hard drive in the section "Available drives" and click the "Customize" button ( note: opposite your system drive "C:\" - the Windows icon will light up).

Then move the slider and limit the disk space used to protect the system (if you use third-party backup programs, you can disable all this protection altogether).

Note: By the way, under the slider that controls disk usage, there is a button for deleting old restore points. You can use it to clean and free up space on your hard drive.

Swap file and hibernation file (hiberfil.sys)

About the swap file (pagefile.sys)

The more programs you run (and the more demanding they are), the more RAM they will require. There comes a time when the RAM is busy, and another “piece of space” is needed. To avoid freezing, Windows uses the space on your hard drive where the least active and necessary data is sent. A special file is used for this - it is called swap file (explained chaotically, but I think a wide audience will understand).

So, essentially this file is needed to expand your RAM. This file is usually 2 times larger than the size of your RAM. Thus, this file can take up significant disk space.

How to check how much space the paging file takes up and how to configure it

To do this, open the Windows Control Panel at the following address: \System and Security\System .

Then, in the "Advanced" tab, open the performance options (see screenshot below).

In most cases, it is recommended to check the box next to “Automatically select paging file size.” True, sometimes the system takes up too much space - in this case, set the volume to 1.5-2 times larger than the size of your RAM. This space will be enough for Windows to function normally.

Note: Many people mistakenly believe that the more space they allocate for virtual memory, the faster their PC will work. This is a real misconception!

The fact is that the speed of reading information from a hard drive is much less than from RAM. Therefore, the page file is used for applications that you are not currently using.

About the file for hibernation and sleep mode (hiberfil.sys)

To quickly “wake up” the computer and start working with it, there is a special one. hibernation mode (in which all the contents of RAM are written to a special file hiberfil.sys(located on the system drive)).

Thanks to this, after turning on the PC, in a matter of seconds it can restore everything from this file and return the computer to its previous state, as if it had never been turned off.

But you have to “pay” for everything - file hiberfil.sys takes up quite a lot of free disk space. If you do not use this PC shutdown mode, then you can “remove” it. To do this, open the command line and enter the command powercfg -h off(screenshot below).

Accumulation of temporary and junk files. Disk cleaning

No matter how careful you are, over time, all sorts of “garbage” begins to accumulate on any hard drive: files from old uninstalled applications, temporary files used during the installation process, browser caches, empty folders, incorrect shortcuts, etc.

All this “good”, over time, begins to seriously affect the performance of your system as a whole...

The highest quality cleaning of Windows from debris is provided by specialists. utilities. I talked about them in one of my previous articles, link below.

To help! The best programs for cleaning your computer from junk -

Disk Cleanup / Computer Accelerator Utility

Windows also has its own disk cleaning tool. To run it you must first open "This computer" (“My Computer”), then go to the properties of the desired disk and click the “Disk Cleanup” button (see screenshot below).

Then check the boxes next to the data that you allow the program to clear on your disk. For example, installation log files, temporary Internet files, offline web pages, etc. By the way, please note that the cleaner tells you how much space can be freed up (on the screen below - up to 314 MB).

Choosing what to clean: which files to delete

By the way, I can’t help but note , what is special. utilities that can not only remove junk, but also configure the system so that your PC works at maximum performance. In my humble opinion, one of the best of its kind is Advanced SystemCare (even in its free version).

For example, while analyzing my disk in Windows (at the time of writing the article)- this utility found as many as 16 GB of junk files! In addition, download items, privacy issues, shortcut errors, malware, and the system registry are checked. In general, a real combine!

Disk cleaning in Advanced SystemCare - 16 GB of garbage found!

Analysis of used disk space: how to find large files and folders

Sometimes you’ve already done everything: cleaned Windows of debris, checked all files and folders manually, looked at installed programs and games - but there’s nothing suspicious, and there’s not enough free space (it disappeared somewhere, but where?)!

In this case, you can use special utilities that will help you build a diagram of the occupied space on the disk, and you can visually and quickly find the largest folders and files. Well, with the folders you find, you can decide for yourself what to do: delete or leave...

In my humble opinion, a very good utility for this matter is WinDirStat.

A simple and convenient utility for estimating used and free space on your hard drive. The utility will build you a convenient diagram in a matter of minutes, using which you can quickly find files and folders that take up a significant amount of space (everything that you have long forgotten about, or didn’t even know about!).

What else is captivating about the program is the built-in tool for deleting folders and files. Just be careful: the utility sees hidden and system files, and you can easily delete data necessary for the system to function. Before deleting a particular file, find out about it!

As an example, I will give a screenshot of my analyzed disk.

WinDirStat - estimate of used disk space

As you can see, it shows how much space certain folders take up, what files are in them, etc. Below is a diagram; by clicking on an area of a certain color, you will see the file that was presented. Of course, it is best to start your analysis with the largest areas of the chart.

To help!

What is my hard drive full of (or where has the free space on the HDD gone) [Disk Analysis] -

That's all for me, I hope your hard drive is no longer cramped and there is free space!