Making Space For Windows7...
October 5, 2018 11:09 AM Subscribe
I inherited an older Windows machine which has its hard drive partitioned so that its system files must fit into a 40GB partition. Is there a way to move users to other partitions? What can I delete from the system files? Windows update cleanup?
Windows update cleanup is a suggested item to delete from system disk cleanup.. but it doesn't seem to go away?
Windows update cleanup is a suggested item to delete from system disk cleanup.. but it doesn't seem to go away?
Best answer: If you don't want to repartition or grow the partition size, you can put some or all of the user directories on another partition.
posted by Candleman at 11:48 AM on October 5, 2018
posted by Candleman at 11:48 AM on October 5, 2018
Allow me to specifically un-recommend using NTFS junctions or any other mechanism for moving the c:\users folder to another drive. Windows has a lot of trouble dealing with these sorts of configurations, and it may break things in subtle ways, and will almost certainly cause trouble if you decide to upgrade the machine to a later version of Windows down the line. You can however move the targets for the individual folders under a user profile to another drive/partition.
posted by Aleyn at 1:28 PM on October 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Aleyn at 1:28 PM on October 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
Windows update cleanup is a suggested item to delete from system disk cleanup.. but it doesn't seem to go away?
Usually takes a system restart to make Windows finish doing that particular cleanup step.
posted by flabdablet at 6:59 PM on October 5, 2018
Usually takes a system restart to make Windows finish doing that particular cleanup step.
posted by flabdablet at 6:59 PM on October 5, 2018
Best answer: And yes, moving C:\Users to a different drive will definitely break things.
I used to make Windows installations with multiple partitions. I don't do that any more; got sick of endlessly working around the multiple ways Windows can find to screw things up when you try to make it put folders it thinks it's in charge of anywhere other than on C: drive.
Specifically, if you use a junction or mount point to make all or part of D: drive appear as C:\Users, the Recycle Bin will stop working and you'll see Access Denied error messages every time you try to delete something. This is because the first step in recycling a file involves using an intra-filesystem Move/Rename operation to move it to a new location inside the Recycler folder on the same drive. But if Windows tries to rename C:\Users\flabdablet\Documents\yow.xls to C:\Recycler\whatever when C:\Users and everything under it is actually on a different drive, then that operation fails and Windows Explorer is too stupid to work out why.
posted by flabdablet at 7:18 PM on October 5, 2018
I used to make Windows installations with multiple partitions. I don't do that any more; got sick of endlessly working around the multiple ways Windows can find to screw things up when you try to make it put folders it thinks it's in charge of anywhere other than on C: drive.
Specifically, if you use a junction or mount point to make all or part of D: drive appear as C:\Users, the Recycle Bin will stop working and you'll see Access Denied error messages every time you try to delete something. This is because the first step in recycling a file involves using an intra-filesystem Move/Rename operation to move it to a new location inside the Recycler folder on the same drive. But if Windows tries to rename C:\Users\flabdablet\Documents\yow.xls to C:\Recycler\whatever when C:\Users and everything under it is actually on a different drive, then that operation fails and Windows Explorer is too stupid to work out why.
posted by flabdablet at 7:18 PM on October 5, 2018
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You can also increase space on the system file partition by following these steps. I find that deleting the superfluous system restore points really helps free up space.
posted by essexjan at 11:16 AM on October 5, 2018