Cleaning Disk Space on Windows 7

Written by · in lost+found

I am running Windows 7 on my Mac via VMWare Fusion. There are not many programs running in the Windows 7 VM, it’s just for the purpose of Ms Project, Ms Office, and some other scripting stuff. No data and file saved in the VM too, I didn’t really bother about the disk space utilization until my 250G SSD is running out of space.

After checking virtual machine VM image sizing, then only I realize the Windows 7 VM is utilizing 57G+ of space! That’s quite a lot!

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Searching through the Windows 7 folder, find out the folder taken most of the space is C:\Users\user\AppData\Local, a total is 11G+

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How to clean it up? It’s not safe to remove the data in the folder “Local” by “Delete” button, the “proper” way of cleaning this up the space is via a program called Disk Cleanup Tools. The program can be found via the search panel at “Windows Start” panel, search for “Disk Cleanup”

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When the program is launched, select those files you think you don’t need it from the check box. I selected all, temporary files took up the most, after finding out those files are windows update and installation temp files, usually it’s store there, most of the time it’s not needed anymore. It’s best you look through the folder and keep those file you needed, another method if you can backup to some other drive, just in case there are drivers needed reuse during program installation.

After Spring Cleaning, it’s now..

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Yep…34G+, I got another 20G of space to spare for other stuffs.