Lack of hard drive space

[Aether]

Hey, so I've been having a constant battle with my HDD, trying to reduce the amount of space taken for ages but it's been a slowly losing battle for some time. My computer is pretty old at this point (I've had it since like 2015) and while I'd love to buy an SSD I don't really have the money for it, being a student and all, so currently I'm trying to figure out what exactly is eating up my HDD.

So yeah, this is my current situation:

Obviously I've uninstalled pretty much everything but the stuff I care about, cleaned out my download folders and the like and then I've had a look around for any other big sources of anything eating my hard drive space and I ended up finding this:

And so of course I was like "Okay that's literally 1/3rd of my HDD taken by steam alone, let me see how much my games take", so I used the steam library and looked at how much was taken up by each game and then I added it all up to get the grand total of 304.417 GB (29 games) meaning Steam itself is taking up 64.583 GB on my computer and I've absolutely no idea if that's the size it's meant to be taking or what. Moreover, I don't even know if those games themselves are taking up more space than they should. So I'm at a loss.

Is there anywhere I should be looking or anything I should be doing that can help me reduce space? I use Glary Utilities pretty often to get rid of trash stuff and 'optimise' my computer, but I'm not really sure where else I can look.

I don't really know a whole lot about the inner workings of a computer so if you have any suggestions make them as simple as possible or literally a step by step tutorial.

 

[axido]

download windirstat

also this:

1) Invest in an SSD as soon as you can, it'll be beneficial in the long run, it will give you a ton more performance and space since the system files will be on the SSD only.

the performance increase is high, even a low end ssd (I don't personally recommend these) will give you a really noticeable boost in boot times and general usage

 

[Blackquill]

Few things

1) Invest in an SSD as soon as you can, it'll be beneficial in the long run, it will give you a ton more performance and space since the system files will be on the SSD only.

2) Maybe dig through the steam folder itself to see where the biggest folder is, I'd put my bets on modded games since they have a habit of not actually uninstalling shit

3) Perhaps look at software like CCleaner to clean up junk files and temp files

4) You could also defragment your hardrive once you've figured stuff out, which again will speed up your computer.

 

[Aether]

I also was originally on Windows 8.1 and did the upgrade to Windows 10, is it possible there's like a backup of Windows 8 somewhere on my computer? I heard about that being a thing but I'm not too sure.

1) Invest in an SSD as soon as you can, it'll be beneficial in the long run, it will give you a ton more performance and space since the system files will be on the SSD only.

I plan to when I can afford it.

2) Maybe dig through the steam folder itself to see where the biggest folder is, I'd put my bets on modded games since they have a habit of not actually uninstalling shit

I'll have a look

3) Perhaps look at software like CCleaner to clean up junk files and temp files

I use Glary Utilities, idk if it's better or not tbh.

4) You could also defragment your hardrive once you've figured stuff out, which again will speed up your computer.

Yeah I do that once a month or after any big installations, so it's not that.

 

[Blackquill]

I also was originally on Windows 8.1 and did the upgrade to Windows 10, is it possible there's like a backup of Windows 8 somewhere on my computer? I heard about that being a thing but I'm not too sure.

You can by going to 'My computer' right clicking on your drive then clicking 'disk cleanup' - the Win 8 files should be there for you to revert to

I don't recommend it

 

[Aether]

You can by going to 'My computer' right clicking on your drive then clicking 'disk cleanup' - the Win 8 files should be there for you to revert to

I don't recommend it

No I meant that as in is there a way to get rid of the old version if that'd free up space?

 

[Deleted member 6062]

I also was originally on Windows 8.1 and did the upgrade to Windows 10, is it possible there's like a backup of Windows 8 somewhere on my computer? I heard about that being a thing but I'm not too sure.

there should be a windows.old folder in your c drive

 

[Aether]

download windirstat

Rainbow Six: Siege alone is fucking 107.7 GB what the actual fuck goobersoft what level of optimisation is that

 

[Deleted member 6062]

Rainbow Six: Siege alone is fucking 107.7 GB what the actual fuck goobersoft what level of optimisation is that

:grinning:

 

[Aether]

:grinning:

I don't even understand why it's 107GB for Siege, I don't even have that ultra HD texture pack or whatever