PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Help! Tech S.O.S (Off topic) Some general computer drive clean up questions

Hi,
My C drive, a 1TB SSD is showing red. There is only 30.8 GB left. I can fix that by deleting some Native Inst stuff. Is there any recomended software to clean up the drive?

The machine is a i9-9900 CPU is 3.60 Ghz RAM 32 GB
Win 11 Pro ver 23H2

At some point I would like to buy a 2TB SSD but that is a good bit of work to install.
I have to run this machine until it dies because the motherboard will not except newer CPU upgrades. I ASSUME I will get another two to three years from this machine based on it being five years old at that time. More or less, who knows when a motherboard will die.

Any advise?

Thanks,

Billy

If you haven't already ... empty/purge the recycle bin and your deleted mail.

If it's a desktop or tower, you can probably add a second drive fairly easily.

A USB drive is an option, but I feel they're a mechanical liability.

I often go into places like Downloads or temp folders and sort the content by file size, then delete the large files if I'm sure I don't need them. It isn't unusual for me to have 4G .iso files around. Ditto for BiaB's downloads folder if you have one. BiaB doesn't clean up after itself. Similar may be true of Native Instruments stuff.

Thanks Gordon. The recycle bin gets cleaned out pretty regularly. The download needs attention, so thanks.

In the past, I have used software like Regedit. That seemed to speed things up but I have always been a little afraid of using such software.

As I have been 100% focused on the rebuild of the new boat for the last year, nothing much has been done with my computer systems. In fact the other main tower i5 system has not been turned on for at least one year.

I have several drives in the computer and lots of space on the e drive which is a two TB WD.

When downloading software sometimes it is hard to keep it off the c drive. I may be able to move all the Toontracks software to the E drive to open up more space.

Thanks,

Billy

If it's any help, I have the whole BiaB bb folder, "NI Content" and "Samples" all on my F drive.

IIRC, if one moves NI stuff, you have to use their download manager to find where you've moved them (locate?). There are some instruction on the NI website under Support.

Thanks Gordon, I may have to move some NI stuff. After I looked I had already moved the Toontracks stuff to another drive. I like Toonstracks software but I have spent a ton of money on their stuff. So I have many GBs on the drives.

By the way, I have to laugh, you are the only one on the site besides me who will write in the 3rd person..."if one moves"
I think that is polite English. I did not learn that concept in English but in French. The French are ultra-polite in many ways with language.

I am sorry but in general, I refuse to get on board with the language of texting so common on the internet.

Billy

Amen to that! Too many reasons.

The exception is for storing VIs. All NI libraries should be stored onto an external. Setting up Native Access to work correctly can be a bit tricky and confusing but, once one figures it all out, this works great. There are plenty of knowledgable users on the NI Support forums that can help. If the USB drive doesn't wake from sleep, shut down, unplug/replug the USB cables and one is back in business. BIAB libraries can stay on the external, too.

Billy, check the BiaB DragDrop folder. When you use Drag and Drop BiaB uses that folder and after you are finished with the song in your DAW you can delete the DragDrop contents. Gigs of not needed data can accumulate in said folder.

I tend to write that when I mean "anyone can" rather than only you can, or "you can if you want, but I wouldn't".
A bit pedantic, perhaps. I guess that's again down to having writen specifications.

Over here it's considerd a bit 'posh' by some ... you know, like "we are not amused". But there are times when it's really the only correct wording.

Also if you are using the BIAB DAW plugin them files are going to be in a folder named bb/BBplugin/SavedTracks.

Thanks guys
I only have one issue that is perhaps not an issue. The C drive is still red but there is 50 gigs of space left. After cleaning everything up the machine is back to its original blazing fast speed.

I am now working on the other main system. After all the microsoft updates which screwed up a few things, it looks to be working fine.

I am trying some ad blockers. Don't know the results yet. I am trying to figure out hot to get rid of the youtube ads for a reasonable cost. I had an account in another country for a good while but that stoped working.

Billy

Billy, there is an application named WinDirStat that will examine your drive and display a graphical map showing where everything is and how much physical space each file is taking:

https://windirstat.net/

You might be surprised to find one or more files taking a huge amount of disk space that you never realized, and don't need any more. I had a customer with a disk space problem, and I found several downloaded movies that he'd watched years previously and never realized that they were still on his computer.

Thanks Trev, I will check that out. There is a lot of things in Native inst I don't use. I deleted 20 gigs or so but drive in still in the red. I did a chkdrv/c at the command line and it reported all good.

I am not sure what Win 11 considers to full on a drive. There is 50 gigs free out of 1TB.

Billy

I just lagged back on to suggest windirstat but I see Trevor already covered it. Nice little free app.
Recommended here.

Thanks guys. I downloaded the https://windirstat.net/. lots of info. I need to move all this NI stuff off the C drive. That is proving to be a bit of a problem. Apps can not find Kontakt. My DAW can see it but I can not delete it. I think I need to delete all the NI stuff and reload it to the E drive. I don't know how to move NI stuff from the C drive. There are more than 200gigs of NI stuff. A few hours of downloads...Problems of prosparity...lol

I now have 80 gigs of free space on the C drive. All this has been an issue from day one. I thought that in the past the red would go away when I recovered 30 gigs or so. This may be a waste of time because the computer is running without issue.

What I really need to do is bite the bullet and install a new 2TB SSD and format the old SSD. Start out with a clean OS....a real pain in the neck or lower down as it were...lol

Also, change my phone number and email address. Well, there is the issue of needing more money for a bigger boat....lol

Billy

You're almost there.
My guess is the red goes away at 10-15% free space .. 80 GB free on a 1TB drive is almost there.

If it's working fine otherwise; enjoy!
You bought some time before the inevitable upgrade <grin>

NI stuff *may need to be removed via their app, then reinstalled from their app elsewhere.
I haven't done it but I'd almost expect that behavior.

After looking into the two things that can be done. One you can change the path for new downloads/reloads. Two it is possible to move NI stuff from one drive to the next but it is really not recommended.

So, delete and start over for NI.

I don't really want to do a real computer upgrade now. And after exploring what is going on I don't think it is really needed at the moment.

With all the fraud that goes on nowadays, completely disconnecting from the past as far as phone numbers and email addresses is a worthwhile thing to do. But...it is a real lot of work. The other issue is that the benefit does not last to very long. The spam calls and useless emails get to be work to deal with.

The bank cashed a $350,000 bogus cashier check on my business account. They made it good but I was out the 350K for a few days. I don't use my bank ATM cards any longer, and more or less only use my American Express Card because American Express is very easy to deal with if there is a fraudulent charge.

IN any event, looks like the computer clean up is going in the right direction.

Thanks guys,

Billy

Rharv mentioned the percentage of free space needed on a drive. The number I’ve seen quoted frequently is 15% free on a spinner hard drive and (more surprisingly) 20% on an SSD.

Billy, I'm in the process of updating a 2Tb SSD system disk to a 4Tb SSD, because I'm in the 'same boat' as you (see what I did there? )
Bottom Line (oh, I did it again ): big is better, just the same as fish
OK, I'll stop now.

I have always believed that both computers and smart phones have a bit of code written into the OS that writes permanent data to the drive each time it is used. This fills the drive with blocked sectors that are not connected to any particular app or data folder. It gradually reduces the available space. Not being a computer geek, this is only a theory I have based on my experiences through many devices that always seem to fill up with no way to reclaim the majority of the drive.

I believe this because I have had a number of computers and phones which say they are running out of space. So I go run the cleanup routine..... delete the big files, the programs I don't use, go through the photo and video and music folders and remove or copy the folders to another data drive, and then delete the folders on the main drive..... all to gain a couple of gigs of space which is nowhere near enough to really make much of a difference. It's like the machine says, OK, I'll give you another breath of air before I drag you under again in a few weeks.

One option that absolutely does work...and I have used this a few times..... RESTORE TO FACTORY. On both the computer and phones, this works to give you back, essentially, a brand new device. It also gives you the opportunity to clean up the machine and you only reload the things you're actually using. Just be sure to make sure you have the serial numbers and keys, and go to the website of that company and "release" the license so you can reinstall easily without having to contact tech support to fix the licenses you have available. One of my apps had two license slots and that can be tricky when you have it on 2 computers and forget to release one of them before you refresh your drive. If you do the restore, figure on a number of days in the rebuild process of reinstalling the managers and the software..... that will depend on your internet download speed. Note: there was actually a guy on the old Cakewalk forum who routinely used this process on a yearly basis to keep his machine running lean and fast.

Yes Herb, it is called format the C drive...lol And even formating the drives does not remove all possible virus issues.

The red went away when I had 120 gigs of free space. So now the issue is to delete all the NI stuff and see if I can figure out how to put it on the correct drives. Some of it needs to be on the C drive. There is a place in Native Access to do all this if one is smart enough to figure it out.

Billy