Even an arguably humongous 16 TB hard disk has a limit: 16 TB! As crazy as it sounds, it, too, can fill up. True, it’ll take two million high-quality photos to do it, but “only” about 150 feature-length 4K movies.
Performance Suffers on a Full Hard Drive
Regardless, you get the idea—you may need to check the free space on a drive from time to time, especially if it starts to slow down or act funny, which is very often the not-so-clear consequence of too much stuff in a single place. Unfortunately, especially in Windows operating systems, you don’t get a friendly “Hey, your hard drive is almost full!” warning. Instead, you get strange behavior, cryptic error messages, or serious problems like a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).
How to Check Free Hard Drive Space in Windows
Fortunately, it’s super easy to check how much free space you have on any of your drives, and it only takes a minute or two. You should now know exactly how much hard drive space is available on your computer. If you’re running low, delete files you don’t need or move them to a different hard drive that has more free space. In Windows 8 or Windows 10, search for this pc and then select This PC. In Windows 7 or Windows Vista, select the Start button, followed by Computer. In Windows XP, go to Start and then My Computer. In Windows 11/10/8, all storage devices are listed in the Devices and drives area. In Windows 7/Vista/XP, Hard Disk Drives and Devices with Removable Storage are listed separately. If that’s all you need to know then you’re done! However, there is a bit more information about your drive’s capacity buried just a bit deeper:
Used space is the sum total of every piece of data on this device.Free space is the difference in the total formatted capacity of the device and the sum total of every piece of data being stored on it. This number indicates how much more storage you’re allowed to fill.Capacity is the total formatted capacity of the drive.Also there is a pie graph, showing used vs free space on the drive, helpful for visualizing how much space you’re using on this hard drive or other device.
How to Check Free Hard Drive Space Using Command Prompt
Another way to check free space is with Command Prompt. The results aren’t as easy to read because the values are represented in bytes instead of gigabytes, but it’s still possible with this command:
How Much Free Space Do You Need?
Microsoft has historically recommended that to avoid problems, you should leave at least 100 MB of free space on whatever drive you have Windows installed on. However, because we’ve seen issues at levels higher than 100 MB, we have always recommended 10 percent free space instead.
Calculate 10 Percent Free Space on Windows PC
To calculate 10 percent free space, just take the number next to Capacity from Step 6 and move the decimal to the left one space. For example, if the hard drive you’re viewing has a total capacity of 250.0 GB, moving the decimal one space to the left makes it 25.0 GB, meaning that you shouldn’t let the free space drop below that for that particular device.
Examine Types of Files Taking Up Storage Space
In Windows 11 & 10, much more detail about what sorts of files are using up your drive’s capacity can be found in Settings > System > Storage. Just choose a drive you’re interested in and Windows will analyze it, breaking it down into categories like System & reserved, Temporary files, Apps & features, Pictures, and more. There are also several free disk space analyzer tools that’ll show you which files and folders are occupying the most space. In any version of Windows, choosing Disk Cleanup from the drive’s properties (Step 6 above) will start the Disk Cleanup utility, a one-stop-shop for removing files that are no longer needed by Windows.
