How to Check Free Space on Hard Drive

Many customers suspect one of the reasons their computer is running slow is because there are too many files on their computer, such as pictures, music and games, which may have filled-up their hard drive. While a drive with low disk space can cause a computer to get slow, you will get plenty of warning messages if this is the case. Today’s hard drives are so large, that most of the time I find there is plenty of free space on the hard drive and the slowness is due to other reasons. But checking how much free space you have on your Hard Drive is very easy.

If you truly are running low on disk space, it is usually your data filling up the drive and not your programs, so I wouldn’t start removing programs just yet. Some very high-end graphics-intensive programs might take up about 1 GB of space, but you should be looking to clean up more space than that.

If you are a die-hard internet surfer and work with pictures, music and video, these are very large files and you might have quite a bit of them in your “Temp” folders which “can and should” be deleted regularly. Temp file cleanup is easily done with a freeware program called CCleaner.

Steps to Check Free Space on Hard Drive

• Click “Start” > Select “Computer” and then view the free space for the desired Hard Drive or partition.
• Note in the picture below, that the “OS (C)” Hard Disk Drive has “78.6 GB” free of 141 GB.
• You should never have less than 15% Free Space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 How To Access “Hard Drive Properties” for More Options

• Right-Click desired “Hard Disk Drive” and Select “Properties“

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Under the “General” tab, you can still view the amount of Used and Free space, but you also have access to the “Disk Cleanup” utility which can free up more space.

• Click the “Disk Cleanup” button to scan for unnecessary file to remove. I do this regularly as part of routine software maintenance.
• If you want to scan and fix any errors on your Hard Drive, click the “Tools” tab to schedule a “Chkdsk. Visit our sister website at http://spywarepreventionguy.com/how-to-run-chkdsk-to-repair-errors-on-hard-drive to view a brief video about how to run Chkdsk.

Disk Cleanup is pretty benign, but one item I never remove are the “Installation files” for my “Microsoft Office” program. Sometimes, these files are needed when you setup a new User account, or when you need to repair Microsoft Office. Without these files, you will have to use your Installation CD … if you can find it.

Also, be careful about experimenting with the other Tabs such as “Security” and “Sharing” as it could restrict access, or allow  unauthorized access to your system.

If you truly did have a Low Disk Space situation, and you want to restrict a single User from filling up the hard drive, then you can change the settings under the “Quota” tab. I suggest you first learn about the terms MB and GB and the average sizes of certain types of files so you can set a “responsible” storage limit for each user.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Free Online Backup

If you need some extra space to store your files, there is a Free Online Backup service called Dropbox. The 1st 2 GB is free, and you can earn extra free space by referring the product. Of course you can just pay for more as well. I use it everyday and was able to quit wearing my Flash Drive around my neck wherever I went. If you want to see my video review of Dropbox, visit our sister website at: http://spywarepreventionguy.com/dropbox