It can be really frustrating to have little remaining disk space on your hard drive, especially when you start running into serious performance issues, such as lag or freezing programs caused by insufficient space.

Fortunately, there are a few quick ways to reclaim your drive space. Let’s dive in.

1. Empty the Recycle Bin

When you delete files on your device, instead of getting deleted immediately, they go into the Recycle Bin and continue to take up your hard drive space. To get rid of them, you’ll need to empty the Recycle Bin manually.

1. Right-click Recycle Bin on your desktop and select Empty Recycle Bin.

2. Click Yes to proceed. This will permanently delete your Recycle Bin items.

2. Uninstall Unnecessary Apps and Programs

If your hard drive is still running low on space. Try deleting programs you’re not using or no longer need. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Press the Windows logo key and R to open the Run dialog.

2. Type appwiz.cpl, then press the Enter key.

3. Right-click the program you don’t use and click Uninstall. (You can also sort the list by program size).

3. Run the Windows Disk Cleanup Tool

Sometimes when you remove programs from your PC, data associated with them remain on your computer. To get rid of the data along with unnecessary operating system files, you can run the Windows built-in utility Disk Cleanup on a monthly basis.

1. Press the Windows logo key on your keyboard, and type Disk Cleanup into the search box.

2. Select Disk Cleanup from the list.

3. Select which drive you want to perform the task on and click OK to proceed.

4. Check all the boxes to select the file types to get rid of, then click OK.

5. Click Clean up system files, then select the drive you want to clean up in the pop-up window.

6. Check all the boxes to select the file types to get rid of, then click OK.

4. Find Out What Files are Taking Up Space

When you’re trying to reclaim your drive space, you want to start with unneeded files that are taking up the most space. To find them and see where your hard drive space is being used up, you can use WinDirStat.

WinDirStat is an excellent, completely FREE, disk analyzer utility – and probably the best one you can find for your Windows device. It can scan your system, find a large chunk of data buried deeply in your internal hard drive, flash drives, or external hard drives, and provide you with a very good overview of what’s occupying your hard disk.

Besides displaying what’s taking up valuable space, WinDirStat also helps you reclaim space by setting up cleanup commands and manually removing data that you no longer need, all from within the program.

Follow the instructions below to see how to free up storage space:

1. Download WinDirStat for free.

Note: This program is donationware. You can use it totally for free, but the author accepts and encourages donations to support the continued software development effort. 

2. Double-click the downloaded file and follow the on-screen instructions to install it.

3. Run a scan of your drive with WinDirStat. This could take a few minutes depending on many files are stored on your drive.

After the process completes, WinDirStat shows you which folders or files are taking up all that storage, along with a description of the file type, the percentage of the total space used by that file, and how many files of that type are on your device. You can then use the Cleanup feature to delete files or folders you don’t need.

5. Disable hibernate

Hibernate is a deeper sleep that was designed mainly for laptops. The feature is enabled by default to save the system state and allow your computer to start up faster. When it’s enabled, it creates a file named hiberfil.sys in your system drive, which can take up gigs of drive space.

For the recent version of Windows, the hiberfil.sys is about 40% of the random access memory (RAM) installed on your computer. So if you have 8GB of RAM, your hiberfil.sys file will take up about 3.2 GB of your hard drive space; if you have 16GB of RAM, it will take up 6.4 GB of the space.

If you’re running low on disk storage and fast startup isn’t your priority, you can safely disable the feature, which will automatically delete the hiberfil.sys file. Here’s how to do it:

1. Press the Windows logo key and type cmd into the search box.

2. Select Run as administrator.

3. Type powercfg /hibernate off and press Enter. (If you want to re-enable the feature later, you can type powercfg /hibernate and press Enter.)

6. Run Antivirus Software

Viruses or malware can sometimes take up significant hard-drive space, destroying your system files. If your drive is filling up unusually, it could be malware issues. In this case, use an antivirus program like Malwarebytes to run a virus scan and cleanup. If the problem persists, you might need to reset Windows to an earlier point.

Conclusion

Bumping up against your PC’s storage limit can be annoying. Hopefully, with the quick tricks in this guide, you can reclaim a couple of gigabytes’ worth of storage space. But if you find yourself constantly running out of space, consider adding a second hard drive like Seagate External Hard Drive.

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions or suggestions.