Reclaiming disk space on Windows [closed]

"System Restore Points

A Windows system creates System Restore points and the default configuration allows a lot of space to be reserved for these restore points. When you know that the system is not going to need 'uninstalls' (meaning, everything you recently installed is working fine) you can delete all but the most recent restore point.

This can be done from

the ""Free up space on your hard disk"" option in

Control Panel,

Performance and Maintenance

Its quite deep and usually missed out.

Recycle Bin

The Recycle Bin usually defaults to 10% of your disk partition (for each partition).
For a 100GB drive, this becomes 10GB reserved for recycle bin.

you can reduce the default to a lower value more useful for your setup
you can also choose to configure recycle storage individually for each partition

I also use this short cut to clean the recycle bin once in a while,

%windir%\system32\cleanmgr.exe /D

Uninstall Folders

Deleting Uninstall Folders.
Already mentioned in another answer here.
There is a script reference here.

Tested on Windows XP, Requires WScript and VBScript (which would be with most Windows OS)

RevoUninstaller

RevoUninstaller is a good freeware to cleanup stray files left around by application uninstalls. It does a pretty neat scan for files hanging around from a rough uninstall.
I also like CCleaner mentioned in another answer here."

"CCleaner

CCleaner is good, in the Windows options at the bottom you can clear up hotfix uninstallers, and other Windows stuff.

CCleaner is the number-one tool for cleaning your Windows PC. It protects your privacy online and makes your computer faster and more secure. Easy to use and a small, fast download."

"SpaceSniffer is a newer tool on the lines of SpaceMonger and WinDirState noted in older answers.
As of Nov/2012 SpaceSniffer is very mature (also see notes from last year in this other answer)

While my question was not really targeted at locating how the user may have used up system disk space,
I can see that this is a useful aspect of detecting wasted space too.

From their webpage,

SpaceSniffer is a freeWare (donations are welcome) and portable tool application that lets you understand how folders and files are structured on your disks. By using a Treemap visualization layout, you have immediate perception of where big folders and files are placed on your devices. Treemap concept was invented by Prof. Ben Shneiderman, who kindly permitted the use of his concept into this tool.

Size of the elements indicates relative size of disk space utilized
Clicking on an element brings out more detail
Double-clicking on an element zooms into that area
Allows filtered searches (say by file extension)
Tagged view with 4 colours that you can designate and then filter the view by tag
Filter by file size or date...
Generate a report with the export module

IMO, SpaceSniffer is the good blend of WinDirState (which uses too many colour tones and SpaceMonger which is quite old now)."

"RidNacs is an easy to use and fast disk space usage analyzer. It scans your local drives, network drives or single directories and displays the results of the analysis in a tree view with a percentage bar.

This gives the user a quick and easy way to identify the largest directories and it's very useful for cleaning up the disk. The result of the scan can be exported in different formats (XML, HTML, CSV, TXT), so it could be printed or compared with future scans.

Besides all these benefits RidNacs has an outstanding scan performance and it scores with a small memory footprint"

I don't know if these are still present in Vista/7, but in XP, the $NtUninstall******$ folders in your Windows directory can take up quite a bit of space and can be safely deleted (assuming you don't plan on ever needing to uninstall any Windows Updates).