One of the drawbacks of modern computers with SSDs is that unless
you’re willing to spend a lot for a disk, you can find yourself running
out of storage space very quickly. Even if you’re diligent about
removing applications that you don’t use, there are a variety of items
that can end up consuming space. Basically, as an OS ages, it builds up
cruft. There are routines that are meant to automatically remove this
cruft built into the OS, but you’d be surprised at how much they miss.
I use the following tricks to free up space. The first is to use Disk
Cleanup (you can launch it as cleanmgr.exe from the Run dialog box)
with the option of cleaning up System Files. Even when you run this on a
regular basis, after a heavy patch Tuesday, you can end up with a lot
of space consumed by temporary files. I actually pin this one to my
taskbar on laptop computers to remind myself to run it on a regular
basis.
Disk cleanup is fairly well known and has been around for ages. The
one that isn’t well known is how you can use dism.exe to reclaim disk
space. This command accomplishes this by cleaning up superseded versions
of elements in the component store. Running this command will block you
from uninstalling updates. For most people that isn’t a problem.
Prior to running the command, ensure that you don’t have any pending
restarts as that can cause the update to fail. From an elevated command
prompt, run the following command:
Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase
It'll take a while to complete, but if your OS is starting to get a bit
long in the tooth, this is a good way to recover space. Works very well
with Windows To Go sticks as well, which tend to have only a small
amount of space that seems to disappear over time. If you get an error
about corruption, make sure that you're up-to-date with updates, do a
fresh reboot, and run the command again.
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