Alienware 17 R5 Laptop C drive is totally full

[Ektar]

I need help, I'm new &I have I have no clue about gaming & etc, although I have maybe 3 games here...C drive is full & I got a new Samsung T7 shield 2TB & was trying to move the games there & got message the games needed to be updated. I started 1 game update & it totally maxed out my drive & got an annoying long tone or beep? Sorry it's been a week, I did a restart & same thing, I got scared & turned my laptop off. I have not turned it back on...I have no clue what to do.

Can someone please help me? My laptop is literally all I have, no TV & etc...,I haven't gamed in over a year due to medical & other issues. I bloody want to be able to use VR for first time.
Alienware 17 R5 - 7811
i7 - 8750H ; GTX 1070 Graphics ; 16 GB DDR 4 Ram ; 256 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD ; Win 10

Thank You
Ektar

PS I used Bleeping Computers initially cz I didn't know where all the storage was being used up & I figured out it was from Steam games. The mate was great & laptop is clean & no viruses & he didn't want to step into this issue because he is not familiar with gaming or Steam.

[Crawl]

Find the game in your library, right click and select properties. Under installed files select change location and pick your other drive. You may need to add the other drive as a download location which can be done under Steam settings then storage.

[_I_]

use windows disk cleanup and uninstall anything you dont need

[Ektar]

When I was moving games to the external T7 , I got a message that said the games needed to be updated first. So I think I only 3 Games, I think Pinball went & I had 2 left I think alien shooter & for sure Red Redemption 2. Issue started with having to update the shooter one...it had been updating all night & then next day NO more HD...
I did change location to the SSD T7 & Pinball went there, but I did not have to update that one.

It was the update that has caused laptop probably now maybe not usable? I have not turned it back on in over a week now.
Thank you so much for responding!!!

[Ektar]

I already had done disk cleanup & those things...it's the steam games taking all the space & was trying to move those games to the new external SSD

[Crawl]

Can you not just uninstall the games and reinstall them to the other drive?

[Ektar]

Here's the drive info...sorry won't let me post image...

Cheers
Ektar

[Ektar]

I don't know is that a normal thing to do? I have not even turned the laptop on because I don't want to fry the inside...also to do anything even just to replace the battery you have have to go thru so many layers of stuff to do anything. I had to take to someone 2 yrs ago to replace the battery.

Guess I will have to turn it on & see what happens...

[Ektar]

I finally turned laptop on & no more beeping. The T7 SSD has Pinball Arcade & I went to library & checked the boxes to move Red Dead Redemption 2, Counter Strike 2 & Steamworks Common Redistrutables (don't know what that is)...anyway cannot move any without updating.

Updating I think uses more memory? Trying to update before now pushed me into HDD almost failure.
So what to do now? I am so relieved laptop started & no warnings yet... Thank you all for your help.

Cheers
Ektar

[Electric Cupcake]

Other than uninstalling games or moving game installs and personal files to a different storage drive, you'd be surprised how much space log files and caches and whatnot can eat up if you've never run Ccleaner or Bleachbit or native Disk Cleanup before.

[Ektar]

Why is there nothing in the Library Folder?

Cheers
Ektar

[Ektar]

Reply to Electric Cupcake I just did all that with BleepingComputer...everything has been cleared & cleaned...I have instructions
open Steam menu>setting>click download then follow up with select "steam library folder" click "Add Library Folder" navigate to Ext SSD & select "Add Library Folder" ***Call it ' Steam Library' hit OK & it's created...next R click on the New Folder & select "Make Default Folder' to tell steam to always download games here...

When I click on Steam settings & then click on Library nothing there & the same clicking on downloads nothing there....But if I just click on Library itself the games are there...

Click on Storage Local C drive shows, click on the down arrow & there is the T7 & click on that & it shows D:\STEAMLIBRARY 19.06 GB

& below is Pinball Arcade 19.06 GB

that game didn't require an update but the other 2 do....however that will kill the hard drive...
How to manage that?

Thank You
Ektar

[_I_]

usb is going to be slow anyway, just uninstall the games you dont play

[Electric Cupcake]

I would wipe the unnecessary recovery partition, but that's kind of a big project.

There's literally no good reason Windows started using precious space for that instead of traditional recovery boot disks, when many laptops still have 128 GB primary drives.

[Ektar]

I only have 3 games & from I have looked into before buying ext. SSD is that is a great way to go.

I thought there was a way to get help from top experienced Mods here to help? Cause it would make things easy & quick...so sorry if I'm wrong, I haven't been here in over a year due to health issues & not really sure how the forum works. I will learn now but Main issue ATM is not to
LOSE my Laptop! It is ALL I have, lost everything I own to toxic mold, I am just now possibly able to game on my Alienware & haven't even had a chance to use the VR & have never even tried VR.

I am just thankful to even be here with all you great people!

Cheers
Ektar

[Bad 💀 Motha]

You also do not have to use the Steam Move option at all. I've done this for MANY years well before Steam ever had that option and while it does make it easier now, it was just as easy to do before.

Here's how to do that.

Say you have games here:
C:\Steam\Steamapps\Common

And C Drive is nearly full, so we want to move Steam Games to D Drive, without moving the entire Steam Client.

So first we will launch Steam Client and go to Settings > Storage and make new folder on Drive D (if have not done so already) and call this new empty folder SteamLibrary

Once made, leave Steam open, but minimize that for now.

Now bring up Windows File Explorer and navigate to where the games are on C Drive. Such as C:\Steam\Steamapps\Common

Highlight the game name folder for those which you no longer want to reside on C Drive. But do COPY not MOVE. Move takes ALOT longer, plus it's an un-safe method, just in case the system or drive stops responding, you could easily lose the data if you use the MOVE option. Which in Windows OS would be CUT, so again use the COPY option.

Then go to the Steam folder you made on other drive, such as D:\SteamLibrary; if it does not already exist, make new folders inside so it's like this: D:\SteamLibrary\Steamapps\Common > this is where to PASTE the games you selected COPY for.

After the copy is completed, look in Task Manager at the drives, look for when the "write speed" stops on the destination drive letter under the Performance tab.

With the games copied to another drive, now bring up Steam Client and go through and right click those games one at a time, selecting the Uninstall option. When this is done for each game you've copied to your other drive. Now double check the folder C:\Steam\Steamapps\Common and that everything for a game you uninstalled, has been removed. As it does not always remove everything.

Now back to Steam, select the game which now resides on another drive, select Install, and now select the other drive letter / library folder and click OK. Steam should see those existing game files and verify it. Once the verify has completed it will make a new app-manifest for it to tell Steam where the is now installed and such. Then it will be ready to play from new drive from now on.



To free up more C Drive space:

> StartMenu > type Disk Cleanup > select the Run As Admin option.
Click More Options tab at top, wipe the system restore. The OS will make more system restore points as you add/remove programs, update drivers, or perform Windows Updates in the future as per normal operation. These can take up quite a bit of space though over time and you only need to be able to go back but so far anyways, so it's needless to keep system restore points that date back before a few months. Some people never clear this out and it ends up having many years worth on there, hogging up space. Once this is cleared out, click the Disk Cleanup tab at top, select all of the boxes available and click OK to wipe out this temp junk.

> Disable Fast Startup + Hibernation.
This is something that was designed to help the OS boot faster, using RAM Cache. However with OS being installed to an SSD, this doesn't really help users. But regardless of whether you use this or not, by default it is hogging a good chunk of disk space. 75% of installed RAM is the size used for the temporary hibernation file (startup ram cache). So if you have 16GB System RAM installed, the Hibernation temp file takes up 12GB of disk space. To rid the drive of this; click StartMenu > type CMD > look for Command Prompt > select Run As Admin. Once this window pops up, type POWERCFG -H OFF and then press ENTER key. Restart Windows to apply the change.

To further free up C drive disk space. Anything you have on C drive, such as personal documents, video files, pictures, any loose downloaded files. Move these over to your other drive. If you have a picture you wish to use as OS Wallpaper, then by all means, leave that on C drive if you wish. However, do not try to move User Folders; such as "Documents" but instead move loose personal files out of those areas onto another drive. The OS needs the Documents structure for other things; such as a place that is often used by Games to store various user related files; such as your save game slots for a game, or a configuration for a game such as the Graphics/Audio settings and alike.