New laptop but low disk space?

[amyfeets]

Hi,I bought a new laptop a few days ago (HP Notebook Stream PC14). I've barely put anything on it like music, pictures etc. It says I have low disk space, nothing left out of 22gb. I've installed a few apps but nothing massive. How can I see what's taking up all this space and how do I free some of it up?

 

[KenB]

Hi and welcome to FpcH

nothing left out of 22gb.

From the specs that I found ...this machine only has a 32GB hard-drive.

Do you have McAfee Anti-Virus on this system ? ( the specs I found suggested that it came with McAfee installed )

Point the screen curser to the top right corner > in the Search Box type in ...... C: .....hit ENTER [ that is C and a Colon ]
Right click on C: > Properties

Let me know what it says against Capacity .....Used Space ......Free Space .
In GB please.

 

[amyfeets]

Hi Ken,

It does have McAfee on it. And although the description for the laptop does say that it has 32 GB on it, when I click on the C: properties it only says 22GB so I'm not sure what's happened to the other 10GB...

Capacity: 22.9GB. Used space 22.1GB. Free space: 807MB. The free space seems to be fluctuating, earlier today it said 0 and now its dithering around the 800 mark.

 

[KenB]

807 MB is not a lot as you said.

Try this:
Open the Search Box again and type in ..................disk space ....ENTER
This should tell you where the majority of your disk space is being allocated.

Is there anything there that stands out?
[ Windows Key + D will take you back ]

 

[amyfeets]

I looked in there earlier but it doesn't account for the used space. I've just changed OneDrive to access online only instead of offline and that's freed up 3GB.

180MB Apps
82.6MB Pictures
11.2MB Music
Everything else is 0.

View attachment 2421

 

[amyfeets]

I've just found part of the missing 32GB I think. There's a partition (though I'm not sure what this means!)
View attachment 2422.

 

[amyfeets]

I've just deleted all pictures that I'd copied to One Drive and that's freed up a further 10GB. So I've now got 13.3GB free which still isn't the 32 I thought I was getting but a hell of a lot better than before!

 

[KenB]

Hi again

There's a partition (though I'm not sure what this means!)

The 5.8 GB Partition ( Recovery Partition ) is there in case you ever need to re-install Windows.
It will allow you to revert to factory conditions - in other words ...as it was when you took it out of the box for the first time.

13.3GB free

This is a big improvement.
Your drive is not very big and you will have to be careful what you install / save to it.

Photos and especially video take up a lot of space.
You can get, quite cheaply, an external-hard-drive in an enclosure that you can save large files to.
This connects to a USB port.
You could use this to backup files and even the whole hard-drive if you wanted to.
Let me know if you want more info on this.

Try this too:
Go back to Search Box and type in .....disk cleanup ...and click on ..
"Clear Disk Space by Deleting Unnecessary Files"

Windows will then calculate the amount of disk space you can recover.
You need to put a tick in the boxes that you wish to remove.
"Temporary Files" are just that .....temporary and not needed.

 

[DSTM]

Also if you have multiple restore points, that takes up a lot of space as well.
Deleting all but the last restore point is a good idea.

 

[RustyKnight]

It doesn't help that a 32Gb hard-drive isn't actually 32Gb!

I have a 32Gb USB stick which is 31937773568 bytes, this converts to 29.7GB.

Its about time the sizes of memory were standardized and manufacturers gave the true size instead of misleading people all the time like they are now.

I bought a 64Gb microSD-card to put music on but it wouldn't fit because the card isn't 64Gb its a bit less.

 

[KenB]

RustyKnight is correct when he says that 32 GB is actually 29.7GB

The explanation is - sort of - complicated.

Computers do not "count" in tens and units as we do. They use the BINARY system - 1 and 0 ....or ON and OFF.

Manufacturers use 1KB = 1,000 bytes
A computer, on the other hand, reads 1KB as 1024 bytes [ this is 2 to the power 10 ]
This is convenient for the computer.

So when the manufacturer states .... 32 GB the computer - working in convenient BINARY numbers - sees it as 29.8 GB
Both are "correct"- it is just that the computer registers it as less due to the fact that 1000 is seen as 1024 by the computer for this calculation.

This is about as simple as I can make it