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I have an Asus laptop that I recently downgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 7. The laptop has a small SSD on it with 24GB of space and a larger standard SATA hard drive with 750GB of space. Now I think it might have been a mistake to install on the SSD because it is a little small, but I would like solutions that allow me to keep this installation and not reinstall.

I moved the Program Files directory and a bunch of the Users directories (Documents, Downloads, Videos, Pictures, etc) to the data drive to save space when installing programs. Now the SSD has around 3 GB free on it and the boot up is really fast which I like.

What else can I safely move off the SSD with the least impact on performance? I would feel better if the SSD had closer to 6GB free for temp files and things that might slowly add up. I have read that a Windows 7 Install base should be around 16GB.

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  • 24GB really isn't enough. Even if you move some folders to the HDD, I'm sure eventually you'll run out of space due to Windows Updates alone.
    – Karan
    Mar 13, 2013 at 2:43
  • on my laptop my windows directory has balooned to just about 40GB believe it or not. Most of which is junk files from updates, etc. ... sigh time to bust out my linux distro of choice...
    – SnakeDoc
    Mar 13, 2013 at 14:52

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In general, the rule of thumb is to have only the things that need to "load fast" on the SSD, such as big commonly used programs, games, the OS of course, and things of that nature. All your "data" should be on a slower, mechanical drive (such as pictures, movies, music, docs, downloads, etc). Also, grab a copy of CCleaner to find and remove any junk windows files that are not needed anymore (like leftover files from windows update, temp internet files, etc).

Keep in mind that once a drive starts to get full, performance will drop off significantly. On an SSD, I think this is less of an issue until it is really full (more than 85%); but on a mechanical drive, they start to degrade in performance much lower due to the physical read/write heads having to move all over the place just to read your data (random seek, etc).

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  • thanks are there any folders you know about specifically that tend to take up a lot of space and can be moved other than the ones I listed.
    – BillPull
    Mar 12, 2013 at 19:46
  • not particularly... it really depends on your system. try downloading and running treesize jam-software.com/treesize_free/download.shtml it will scan a directory or drive and list out graphically exactly where all your storage space is used up. this might help you identify some "large" directories that might be considered to move to the mechanical drive.
    – SnakeDoc
    Mar 12, 2013 at 19:58
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May I ask how you moved the Program Files/Program Files (x86)?

I too have a Asus Laptop with 32 gb ssd. I just succeeded on moving Users folder to an other partition. But Installing updates and drivers on Program Files/(x86) ate a lot of my space.

Here's some methods to free up more space:

How to get more free space on the SSD

A. Disable the Hibernation file.

  1. find "Command Prompt" in the Start menu, right-click and Run as Administrator.
  2. run powercfg.exe /hibernate off, and exit the terminal window.

You will now have about 2-4GB additional free space. Instead of hibernation it will S3 sleep, which works so fast that it's allowing the system to resume before you even have time to open the lid fully. It will also save the SSD from unnecessary writes, the only con is that it can use slightly more power while sleeping for long periods.

B. Lower the Page File disk usage.

  1. Click on the System icon in the Control Panel and select the Advanced tab.
  2. Under Performance, click Settings. Go to Advanced
  3. Under Virtual Memory, click Change and select 'Custom size', and enter minimum as 512 and maximum as 1024.
  4. Save the changes and reboot.

You will now have about 3GB additional free space. The lower Page File size will probably not affect the system performance in any way. (If you've upgraded it to 6-10GB ram you can probably disable the page file altogether)

Taken from this website:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/672616-guide-ux32vd-how-install-windows-7-integrated-32gb-ssd.html

My next step is to upgrade RAM to 8 gb.

Anyway... hope it helps.

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  • good suggestions, although I'd be careful with no pagefile -- if you run out of RAM, your system may become unstable. Moving Program Files/Program Files (x86) is as easy as telling a new program to install to your second drive (just choose the root) - it will automagically create the new Program Files/Program Files (x86) directory.
    – SnakeDoc
    Mar 22, 2013 at 15:44

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