How do I increase a laptop storage space?

Norman_Castle

I've got a 10 year old laptop with a 40gb hd. This is split between two operating systems, windows xp and linux mint. Both have at least 2 printers installed with room to spare.
What printer software have you installed?

BigAl94

Assuming it's W10 operating system native drivers should enable the printer to work without installing any software? https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/add-printer-windows-10

Janey1a

I have the Canon printer software downloaded but it includes scanning as well as printing.

I'm just not confident in looking through and deleting stuff that the pc came with - it makes sense to do that but I don't really know what I'm looking at - C drive includes bonjour, Dropbox, loads of stuff under Hewlett-Packard, HP and HP Inc(?!), Realtek, I don't even know what this stuff is!! I never realised how rubbish I am with techie stuff til now! :huh:

Janey1a

I didn't realise you could do this - I might uninstall all the canon software and see if this works.

Janey1a

Ok, so I thought I would just do a complete restore of the laptop and start again from scratch and ensure I save any new programs somewhere other than the C drive......... I can't even do this because it says it needs more GB in the C drive to restore!

The laptop came with free Microsoft programs for a year so that is all loaded onto C drive which was done automatically during set up. I haven't deleted any of that as yet as I am concerned I might lose the freebie when I restore the laptop. I have been through and uninstalled some bits from C drive including iTunes and all the canon printer software but it still won't restore.

I'm starting to lose the plot!!!! :mad:

emptybox

It won't be programs themselves, or printer drivers taking up the space. It'll either be personal data (such as your OH's music files), or it'll be junk from previous Windows updates and that sort of thing.

Use the disk clean-up utility to see if you can gain any space.
Open up Control Panel and search for "space", then select the entry that says
'Free up space by deleting unnecessary files' or words to that effect.
Then the first time it comes up with the result, click on the clean-up system files button (again WTTE) and let it run again.
Delete any previous Windows version and Windows update stuff.

You can now achieve the same result via the Settings app, but I'm not on Windows at the moment, so can't direct you. But you only need to do one or the other

Also open up System Restore from Control Panel. Click on the C: drive and click the 'configure' button and see if you can save any space by deleting the saved restore points.

On a small drive like that I would also disable Hibernation, as that can use up a lot of space. But see how much space you can find with the other stuff first, as disabling hibernation involves using the command prompt and also disables the fast startup routine.
It won't stop you putting the laptop to sleep by closing the lid though.

Norman_Castle

I've used this in the past which found 5gb of files I couldn't see elsewhere.
http://download.cnet.com/Disk-Space-Fan-4-Free/3000-2248_4-10972582.html

EveryWhere

Janey1a wrote: »

HP 14" Stream 14-ax000na 4GB 32GB

It was £250 which is a lot of money for me and I didn't think this was an unreasonable amount for a basic laptop.

Does this help those of you who asked for the detail before advising what I could do?

Many thanks.

Yes £250 is the most I've ever spent on a laptop.

Anyway, refer back to post #10. That is the card that you need.

But do this first; https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-delete-the-windows-old-folder-from-windows-10/

pramsay13

motorguy wrote: »

Bloody hell, thats tiny!! :eek:

My last laptop had that much RAM.

Even my mobile phone has 256GB on board storage (although thats a bit of an exception i know)

Whats the make and model?

It's an HP chromebook so it's deliberately tiny.
Everything is web based so all storage and apps are online.

therealhyper

pramsay13 wrote: »

It's an HP chromebook so it's deliberately tiny.
Everything is web based so all storage and apps are online.

eMMC is essentially SD card chip which is soldered onto a motherboard.

It’s used mostly in mobile devices - phones, tablets, small laptops. It’s small, and relatively inexpensive.


The OS and recovery partitions already installed on your laptop will take up a chunk of your 32GB of space. So you probably woulndt have had much space left to use.


Removing printer software wont really resolve this long term.



You can you buy an external hard-drive, plug and use (they are quite cheap these days) but you would really need usable space on your laptop to run programs and software...this will be more difficult if youre relaying on your external harddrive.



If you are able to, my suggestion would be to return the laptop and buy something with a larger hard-drive. These type of laptops are made for browsing and using online tools/software, hence the low amount of useble hard-drive space.



Have you considered buying a used laptop ? for £250 you could buy a much better spec laptop, with warranty, and would last you a couple of years.


Feel free to message me if you need any further advice or pointers.


Good luck