Windows requires a certain amount of free space on your boot drive to function effectively and efficiently.
A very rough guide is if your free space is less than 15% of your drive capacity, then Windows can quickly run out of room for things like; cache files, temporary storage, and increases to the paging file. This can be exacerbated if running multiple programs and having multiple tabs open.
The 15% rough guide is a leftover from the days when Windows Defragmenter would not run unless there was more than 15% free space.
With the large capacities of modern drives, 15% of 256GB is far different to 15% of 1TB so there is no hard and fast rule as to what the minimum free space requirement should be.
Perhaps a better benchmark is to have at least 20GB of free space available for Windows to run smoothly. But again, this varies depending on factors like cloud syncing, number of programs running, post installation files, and Windows Updates.
To reclaim drive space, you can run either CCleaner (free version) or Glary Disk Cleaner or the inbuilt cleanmgr command to remove any unnecessary, accumulated junk files.
To find where your drive capacity is being used, use WizTree to show the folders using the most space.
A very rough guide is if your free space is less than 15% of your drive capacity, then Windows can quickly run out of room for things like; cache files, temporary storage, and increases to the paging file. This can be exacerbated if running multiple programs and having multiple tabs open.
The 15% rough guide is a leftover from the days when Windows Defragmenter would not run unless there was more than 15% free space.
With the large capacities of modern drives, 15% of 256GB is far different to 15% of 1TB so there is no hard and fast rule as to what the minimum free space requirement should be.
Perhaps a better benchmark is to have at least 20GB of free space available for Windows to run smoothly. But again, this varies depending on factors like cloud syncing, number of programs running, post installation files, and Windows Updates.
To reclaim drive space, you can run either CCleaner (free version) or Glary Disk Cleaner or the inbuilt cleanmgr command to remove any unnecessary, accumulated junk files.
To find where your drive capacity is being used, use WizTree to show the folders using the most space.
