this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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For space: Check what your largest files are, then see if its safe to remove them. Tools like TreeSize are great for this specific usecase.
For performance: Narrow down exactly whats causing it to hit 100% usage. To do that, open task manager, then click the hard drive column. Sort it so they most utilize process is at the top, and that will be whats causing it to max.
Another thing you could try is running these two commands in an elevated powershell/cmd window (right click start, select "run cmd as admin"):
EDIT: Thank you for correcting, L3s!
That's 931GB, so about 1TB.
I would do TreeSize then, make sure to run it as admin (there's an option once you open it in the top left). Have that scan all your folders on that drive, then expand the biggest folders to see what's eating all that space up. If you lookup any files that you aren't sure if they're important, usually you'll find some discussions about whether that file is critical or not (for example, if they're in c:\windows\system32). Comb through each large folder and see what you can clean-up, and that'll give you some space back hopefully, or at least show you what you're storing that's eating it all up.
Just don't delete all of System32?