I am busy with work and other things–if I were not, I would have probably switched to Linux many years ago. I continue to be amazed and appalled with the interminable awfulness of Windows 11.
I have a decently-spec’ed Dell PC, but it only has a 256 GB C drive (SSD). This has been ok for a few years now. I keep nearly all files on another drive with links to the desktop. I have uninstalled some apps to free up space.
I want to keep this PC for another couple of years and have no problem shelling out for a 2 or 4 TB C drive (SSD). However, it is yet another of life’s hassles to take it up to our tech and wait I don’t know how long for this to be done (mirror C drive). So, I’ve been putting it off…
The issue is that Win 11 has zero compunction about shoveling endless steaming piles of garbage onto my C drive with seemingly zero regard for how much space is left. The current issue seems related to the amazingly energy-intensive Modern Service Update. I have been killing this app whenever I see it running. Not a permanent solution, but just for now.
Some other Windows process is now shoveling stuff onto my C drive and I am down to 16 GB left.
I have used disk cleanup numerous times, run Dell Support assist, deleted all kinds of stuff, etc.
Any advice to help me avoid disaster for the time being (while I am working from home, trying to get stuff done!)?
If I get another C drive, is 2TB enough? 4TB? Maybe some day Windows 11 will decide it needs to shovel 5 TB of stuff on there and I’ll be screwed again.?
Thanks.
ALSO, I am looking for some good phone tech support I can get at a reasonable price. I used to have a friend who was very good at this, but he has had many serious health problems lately and I don’t want to bother him with my problems any longer. Please advise.
BleachBit cleans the system. The majority of the clutter is likely due to system update files that do nothing after they have been installed. There are other temporary files that fill up the drive quickly. Many proprietary apps such as Adobe products take note of the free space and aim to use all of it as soon as possible!
simplewall allows the user to block anything from accessing the network. This prevents apps including system processes from calling home, downloading/uploading garbage or confidential data, or downloading/uploading at a bad time.
There are other neat little tools, but these make life a lot easier. As a start, be careful not to be too aggressive with the cleaning or firewall, lest you break something. They can be incredibly powerful if you go all out. Customizing—rather than turning every feature on—is key.
I can’t say anything for windows (except chuck it in the bin, but I’ll skip that). When you finally get the urge or time to move to linux, I think we live really close. I have a pile of 120GB SSDs; I’d be happy to give you one to install linux on to play with.
Thanks very much. I think I will start with BleachBit. Any advice on how to be cautious with this one?
I do have Adobe Creative Cloud through work. I dumped LR years ago and went to RT and would prefer to have nothing to do with Adobe. The ONLY thing I need at home is Acrobat (full version). Adobe CC is always running stuff in the background.
Using simplewall, I block everything Adobe with no repercussions; I do not use any of the sharing, signing or AI features.
Default BleachBit settings should be okay. Maybe uncheck a few things you are not sure about. When I first used it, in power user fashion, I checked almost everything that came with the app, as well as installing and checking off almost all the community filters. Big mistake; Windows is also pretty fragile .
Just for comparison my system running Win11 (its a Dell) chugs along keeping roughly these numbers on my 1TB NVME… I do clean it up, but not often and I don’t have any Adobe or cloud stuff other than One-drive…
I poked around just now quickly and found out that of the 70 odd Gb for system and reserve that I have a 26GB hibernation file and some other reserved files totalling about 50GB and so likely the OS is roughtly 20GB or so. I have been running this box for 3 years now…
I have wsl running with Ubuntu installed on it and that is taking up around 60GB which goes towards my 179 GB of installed stuff. My msys64 compiling folder is about 28GB and there were some other things but it seems like you can get a pretty good breakdown in the storage section and see where the large chunks are… I could likely shrink things down some but with the few video and graphics apps I have and the caching that they all do I am sure it is hard not to have thing swell…
I hope you can get it to a workable condition but really porting your drive to a new one is pretty easy and 1TB media is pretty cheap and worth avoiding the headaches you are likely dealting with
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