Surface Pro Tablet Disappearing Space

Question

Hi all,

I have a Surface Pro Tablet which is rapidly running out of space.  I read someplace that this 64gb model shipped with 23 gb available to the consumer.  Now here's the thing: I have 3 gb of photos, ~2gb of programs, and 2gb of apps installed.  And yet, my computer indicates that free space on the drive is below 7gb.  I have gone through all of the basic space freeing solutions.  It seems that ever since I installed 8.1, Windows Update has been eating up a larger and larger chunk of the storage space.  I estimate that under 15gb of space is available to me now.  Is there any way to stop the OS from being a space hog or at least return to having 23 gb of space for myself like I had when I started?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi dmaggs,

Some of the space is used up by Windows itself, this can't be helped, but some of it is used for specialist recovery information that helps the OS self-heal and provide the ability to recover automatically if you have a bootup/OS issue. This can be removed and put on a USB stick instead, but don't lose this or you may have issues recovering the system in future.

One of the largest regular space takers can be the "System error memory dump files" - these will be created each time your system has some kind of fault. I suggest the first step is to clean down all unnecessary files, such as those created temporarily whilst updates are applied, and these memory dump files:

1. Go to My Computer
2. Right click on the C: drive and choose Properties
3. Select "Disk Clean-up"
4. Select "Clean up system files" (this will take a while to calculate)
5. Review the list of items, ensuring ticks in the relevant boxes and run the clean up (click OK)
6. Check your new Free Disk Space amount to confirm and increase
7. Repeat the process once a month

You can then search your C: drive for other large files/folders using a trial version of a great tool called "Tree Size"  http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

If you do want to remove the recovery information, follow these instructions: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2164909/windows/windows-8--how-to-free-up-disk-space-on-microsoft-surface-tablets.html

Answer 2

Thank you; this helped free up space quite a bit and I haven't even pursued all of the suggestions yet.  Much appreciated!

Answer 3

hey i have the same problem. surface pro low on memory, but i only have like 1GB of installed apps, and literally no files, just the system, even i have uninstalled some apps but my memory keeps running low every time

please help!! or tell me how can i make a usb or memory card an extension of the default c memory

Answer 4

Where does tree size show the most space is being used?

have you tried the other steps above?

Answer 5

in c i have 60.6GB,

windows 37.7 GB

Users 10.5

yea i have tried the other steps, actually the diak clean up was a daily task to perform for me cause i just cannot work with my space running low everytime

please tell me what can i do