2
Install Linux.
In case you don't need Windows updates, maybe use Windows Update Blocker? It's a registry editor to block the update services even in editions that don't fully support disabling the services.
- You mentioned hard drive, is it a SSD or HDD?
- How big of a drive?
- When you say its getting used up, do you mean its running out of space or the performance is at 100%?
For space: Check what your largest files are, then see if its safe to remove them. Tools like TreeSize are great for this specific usecase.
For performance: Narrow down exactly whats causing it to hit 100% usage. To do that, open task manager, then click the hard drive column. Sort it so they most utilize process is at the top, and that will be whats causing it to max.
Another thing you could try is running these two commands in an elevated powershell/cmd window (right click start, select "run cmd as admin"):
- SFC /ScanNow
- DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
- It's an HDD
- It's at least 1 TB (or 931GB)
- Performance is still okay - I'm talking about the space
EDIT: Thank you for correcting, L3s!
That's 931GB, so about 1TB.
I would do TreeSize then, make sure to run it as admin (there's an option once you open it in the top left). Have that scan all your folders on that drive, then expand the biggest folders to see what's eating all that space up. If you lookup any files that you aren't sure if they're important, usually you'll find some discussions about whether that file is critical or not (for example, if they're in c:\windows\system32). Comb through each large folder and see what you can clean-up, and that'll give you some space back hopefully, or at least show you what you're storing that's eating it all up.
Just don't delete all of System32?
Grab a program that lets you easily check what parts of the file tree have the most volume. If it's not apparent what you should clean up from the results, please provide some of the bloated folders so others can provide opinions.
Windows is stupid AF when it comes to multiple drives and it tends to create swap on all of them.
I think Advanced settings -> performance should get you on the tab with swap settings.
I have WIndows 10 - where is that on the settings?
What have you done so far
Whenever I reboot Windows 10, the hard drive I use for that jumps back to 40 GB capacity.
could try: start -> disk cleanup -> hit the 'clean up system files' button bottom left
Other than that
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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