this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2024
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When I first started it up it was 170gb is there anyway to get it to at least 200? And what can I get rid of on an HP laptop that won't screw it up?

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Tbh I thought this was a shitpost trying to get people to Linux

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Nope so far I got it up to 170 gb with revo unistaller It just kind of makes me think I would have an air tight case for false advertising.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

hp is notorious for pre installing apps that you dont need, it's called bloatware. you can maybe remove some of those.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Golden rule is to never use a computer with the OS that was preloaded. You'll never know what they put in there.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

The hard drive may be 256gb but a big chunk of that is taken up by Windows and also there will be a hidden recovery partition. So 170gb sounds about right. You can't reduce how much space windows takes, and the recovery partition is worth keeping in case you get in to trouble.

There may be programs HP have installed that you can remove in add/remove software to make a bit more space. HP is notorious for bliatware - installing things to try and sell you stuff. Probably a good few gb may be that crap.

If you download a big game, then it's not a big deal if you're using that game. 80gb is still plenty. And you can delete the game when you're done and use that 90gb for something else.

256gb isn't much but it's enough unless you want multiple big games installed or have a big library of data such as movies or pictures.

Also it may be possible to upgrade the hard drive - depends on the model and how accessible the hard drive is. If you can access the hard drive to replace it then you could get a 1tb drive for example. There are guides online but basically you'd need to copy the existing drive to the new drive (would need a USB adaptor to mount the new drive first) and then swap the drives round. It very much depends on the laptop though.

Another option is an external hard drive connected via USB - it's not good for gaming or running big programmes but it is fine for storing movies and pictures.

If the priority is to have multiple different big games installed at the same time, then upgrade the hard drive. Most HP models it's generally doable without much fuss. More difficult with the ultra slim devices though. Search for your model online and see what people have done.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

A very silly but useful hack I did to get the MS flight sim install down to about 40GB (normally ~270GB) before I gave up on windows was this.

Set up a nextcloud server on a raspberry pi.

Install the client on your windows machine.

Add your games install folder as a connection on the nextcloud client and enable VFS (virtual filesystem)

Once synced, right click the folder and select "free up space..."

This will basically delete the file data from your local machine and redownload it whenever windows tries to access a file.

Now launch your game and it'll take a while to start as it has to redownload the files it actually needs to run, but it won't bother getting what it doesn't have to.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Clean install without the HP bloat, backup the important stuff elsewhere first.

Another thing: Are you subscribed to a bajillion mods? That is the case for me. My CoD Black Ops 3 is 30GB, with DLC is 90GB, after Steam workshop mods is 377 GB.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

I never download mods. I make a point of it. If a game is released and stands on it own I may think about it but thats it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Reinstall Windows and then debloat it. Here's a guide from AtlasOS. I recommend it to all my friends who have just bought a new laptop. I have no complaints from them. Windows Updates, Defender, Microsoft Store work as expected.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

If you downloaded the game illegally then installed it on your hard drive then... You have your answer.

You might still have the downloaded game and you have the installed game. Depending on the fiability of your download source there might also be temporary install file, somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Could be on there up to three times. Once as the downloaded archive, once as the expanded archive, and once as the installed game.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

You obviously need to download more RAM.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

suppose

supposed

its

it's

170gb[.] [I]s there anyway

any way

I recommend swapping in a new SSD . Use something like clonezilla to mirror the SSD from the old one to the new.

Also see whether you can bump the RAM in that box: laptops often have a LOT of junk that starts on boot that just seems to eat RAM, not the least of which is Windows itself. Adding RAM will have the most immediate effect once you've found the space to install things.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Cant you upgrade the laptop? Would you share the model?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Just adding for op that crucial has some drives on sale right now.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago

I'm concerned about OP's ability to upgrade a drive based on the nature of the question. I'd like to also throw in some help with cloning a drive.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 days ago
[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Ram and (ssd) storage are two different things. Storage space is the one relevant to this question. Also, both of those numbers, 8 gb of ram and 256 gb of disk space, are very low these days.

If you're using the laptop with the software it came with, it might have a bunch of demo versions of useless apps as advertisements. HP is (or at least used to be) notorious for this crap. Somewhere in the settings should be an apps page that lists what's installed, check there.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Yeah that's your best bet, remove all the bloatware and regain 20 GB+

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can get a terabyte SSD for like $50 these days. It might be worth it to just upgrade.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Providing it's not soldered to the motherboard like Apple does with no way to add more.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Lots of people commenting about the laptop here, so let me offer something different. What's that one game you downloaded? Because if it is Ark: Survival Evolved (or Ascended) then still having 80G left is pretty good!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I am going to date myself but its Watch Dogs 2

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

excellent choice :)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Probably just a lot of bloatware. When I’ve been in this situation in the past, I did a completely fresh install of windows. Much smaller. Linux can free up even more space.

There really isn’t anything necessary from HP, but it also depends a lot on your comfort working with the computer so ymmv. I don’t know what’s gonna happen if 3 months down the line you need to call customer support for something. If it were me, I’d be thinking “worst case scenario I can just factory reset”, especially if I had everything important backed up somewhere.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Look up WizTree for a quick way to see/fix what's taking up your space.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

WizTree seems to be quite a bit faster, with almost identical look&feel

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Windirstat is way, way, way slower. WizTree scans my entire drive in literal seconds.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

WizTree scans my entire drive

It doesn't, really. It's already indexed. It's a feature of the NTFS file system. It's the same way Everything Search can find files almost instantly, and what Windows Search used back when it worked properly in the Windows XP days.

Why Microsoft stopped using that and switched to whatever the current useless search function uses escapes comprehension, though it probably has something to do with them wanting to shove Bing results and other spam in there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

This is the answer, you can actually visually see what's taking the storage space.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Why do you need "to get it to at least 200”?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Yeah, that's like 80% free. Windows itself is bloated and if you add a couple modern games on top of that... Good luck.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

wipe everything- HP is the worst possible company for preinstalled data mining bloatware. reinstall Tiny11 to further reduce Microsoft's bloat. Then consider getting a 1tb portable SSD, most of them are plenty fast enough to support having games installed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

“Fast enough to having games installed” haha this reminds me of when I started gaming again after years, I saw games are now like 150gb so I considered it bulk data and put it on my HDDs 😬 but yea the stuff also needs to be loaded at some point

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Chances are good you could get a new larger ssd installed, right off the bat you won't get the full amount of storage advertised, windows 11 takes up around 18 gb. I don't know how much junk HP loads however. 250gb doesn't really give much room anymore, unless it's for productivity.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

windows 11 takes up around 18 gb

No way. Maybe a fresh minimal installation but Windows bloats up fairly quickly over time. I would use 250 GB partitions just for C: back when I was still using Windows and even that got tight in some cases.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

1: hp laptops are easy to work on - one back panel and everything is accessible. Some screws are under the rubber feet 2: m.2 ssd is your storage, most likely a 2280 nvme, which is almost all of them. Open the laptop and measure the length of the ssd to confirm. They come in 80, 40, and 30mm lengths (2280, 2240, 2230). Get a 1TB minimum. 3: Upgrade that 8gb ram to 32gb (2x16gb). Assuming this is a clearance laptop with ddr4, that 8gb it has now is not enough for Win11 and daily use - Windows takes up to 5GB on its own, the remaining 3 will be eaten by a browser tab in chrome or firefox. In addition, your onboard graphics can eat up to 2GB of RAM as well, so you're strangled by that small RAM amount no matter what. Don't be shy about slamming more than you need - it's future proofing. 4: look up your hp model on their website and get the service manual. It shows you how to rebuild the laptop from the frame up. Use this to figure out how to unbolt the back panel. 5: While you're there, look at the specs - what kind of ram, how much it accepts, and what ssd it has.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

You can't broadly say that for a brand, especially one as diverse as HP. Some are very easy, mostly the enterprise models. Many are borderline impossible. Without knowing the model, it's impossible to say. It could require removing the motherboard, or special tools to open the case.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

As someone said - upgrade your storage. No excuse these days why someone can't.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

Financial, or knowledge are valid reasons. Idk if hp is going the way of apple and MS and soldering storage to the motherboard.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If it is a bottom of the barrel HP laptop it has a very high chance of being soldered RAM and storage with a glued case.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Well, OP failed to even detail what the hell model it is. As is the case with 95% of all tech questions where nobody states what model of computer it is despite it being stupid easy to know.

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