When I first started it up it was 170gb is there anyway to get it to at least 200? And what can I get rid of on an HP laptop that won’t screw it up?
Ram and (ssd) storage are two different things. Storage space is the one relevant to this question. Also, both of those numbers, 8 gb of ram and 256 gb of disk space, are very low these days.
If you’re using the laptop with the software it came with, it might have a bunch of demo versions of useless apps as advertisements. HP is (or at least used to be) notorious for this crap. Somewhere in the settings should be an apps page that lists what’s installed, check there.
Yeah that’s your best bet, remove all the bloatware and regain 20 GB+
256 is absolutely fine unless you work with video editing or games. If you’re just growing the net it’ll last you forever.
You can get a terabyte SSD for like $50 these days. It might be worth it to just upgrade.
Providing it’s not soldered to the motherboard like Apple does with no way to add more.
Look up WizTree for a quick way to see/fix what’s taking up your space.
Windirstat
Windirstat is way, way, way slower. WizTree scans my entire drive in literal seconds.
WizTree scans my entire drive
It doesn’t, really. It’s already indexed. It’s a feature of the NTFS file system. It’s the same way Everything Search can find files almost instantly, and what Windows Search used back when it worked properly in the Windows XP days.
Why Microsoft stopped using that and switched to whatever the current useless search function uses escapes comprehension, though it probably has something to do with them wanting to shove Bing results and other spam in there.
WizTree seems to be quite a bit faster, with almost identical look&feel
This is the answer, you can actually visually see what’s taking the storage space.
Lots of people commenting about the laptop here, so let me offer something different. What’s that one game you downloaded? Because if it is Ark: Survival Evolved (or Ascended) then still having 80G left is pretty good!
I am going to date myself but its Watch Dogs 2
excellent choice :)
Chances are good you could get a new larger ssd installed, right off the bat you won’t get the full amount of storage advertised, windows 11 takes up around 18 gb. I don’t know how much junk HP loads however. 250gb doesn’t really give much room anymore, unless it’s for productivity.
windows 11 takes up around 18 gb
No way. Maybe a fresh minimal installation but Windows bloats up fairly quickly over time. I would use 250 GB partitions just for C: back when I was still using Windows and even that got tight in some cases.
You’re correct I read a source that said 18 gb, but I see another here that says 20 to 40.
You obviously need to download more RAM.
Cant you upgrade the laptop? Would you share the model?
Just adding for op that crucial has some drives on sale right now.
I’m concerned about OP’s ability to upgrade a drive based on the nature of the question. I’d like to also throw in some help with cloning a drive.
Tbh I thought this was a shitpost trying to get people to Linux
Nope so far I got it up to 170 gb with revo unistaller It just kind of makes me think I would have an air tight case for false advertising.
If you downloaded the game illegally then installed it on your hard drive then… You have your answer.
You might still have the downloaded game and you have the installed game. Depending on the fiability of your download source there might also be temporary install file, somewhere.
Could be on there up to three times. Once as the downloaded archive, once as the expanded archive, and once as the installed game.
wipe everything- HP is the worst possible company for preinstalled data mining bloatware. reinstall Tiny11 to further reduce Microsoft’s bloat. Then consider getting a 1tb portable SSD, most of them are plenty fast enough to support having games installed.
“Fast enough to having games installed” haha this reminds me of when I started gaming again after years, I saw games are now like 150gb so I considered it bulk data and put it on my HDDs 😬 but yea the stuff also needs to be loaded at some point
Probably just a lot of bloatware. When I’ve been in this situation in the past, I did a completely fresh install of windows. Much smaller. Linux can free up even more space.
There really isn’t anything necessary from HP, but it also depends a lot on your comfort working with the computer so ymmv. I don’t know what’s gonna happen if 3 months down the line you need to call customer support for something. If it were me, I’d be thinking “worst case scenario I can just factory reset”, especially if I had everything important backed up somewhere.
so long as it’s under warranty. yea. make sure you have a way to actually do the ‘factory reset’.
if you nix the partitions during a ‘clean install’ of windows or of linux, you won’t.
unless you’ve made a backup image of the hdd to an external (using reflect or similar), or in hp’s case–download their recovery media creator (runs on windows only but doesn’t have to be the target system) and build a recovery flash drive for your model.
i have a new hp laptop here with same specs (r3,17in,8gb,250ssd). cleaned-up and updated, with firefox, the user’s av, and a couple smaller programs, but no crud from being ‘used’ yet. ~ 172gb free.
your goal of 200gb free with hp’s factory load is not going to happen. you will have to reinstall from a plain win11 installer usb made from microsoft’s utility.
then after you’re installed, put windows into compact state:
compact /compactos:always
instructions herebefore you begin, i would highly recommend finding ‘hp cloud recovery tool’ from the windows ‘store’. install that, run it off the start menu (find it, right click, run-as-admin), and make a factory recovery usb for your model (the model number is on the bottom of the unit, usually, looks something like “63U47UA#ABA”). so you’ll need two empty flash drives. the hp recovery requires 32gb one. the windows installer one can be as small as 8gb i think.
all that, and you’ll probably still be a little short of your goal–and that’s without updates, junk added while used, and anything you may want to put on. and also remember ssd drives function best when they aren’t jam-packed with data. so you really should be considering an upgrade for the nvme ssd inside the laptop.
As someone said - upgrade your storage. No excuse these days why someone can’t.
Financial, or knowledge are valid reasons. Idk if hp is going the way of apple and MS and soldering storage to the motherboard.
If it is a bottom of the barrel HP laptop it has a very high chance of being soldered RAM and storage with a glued case.
Well, OP failed to even detail what the hell model it is. As is the case with 95% of all tech questions where nobody states what model of computer it is despite it being stupid easy to know.
Why do you need "to get it to at least 200”?
Yeah, that’s like 80% free. Windows itself is bloated and if you add a couple modern games on top of that… Good luck.
Clean install without the HP bloat, backup the important stuff elsewhere first.
Another thing: Are you subscribed to a bajillion mods? That is the case for me. My CoD Black Ops 3 is 30GB, with DLC is 90GB, after Steam workshop mods is 377 GB.
I never download mods. I make a point of it. If a game is released and stands on it own I may think about it but thats it.
