Compacted Outlook and reclaimed 12GB!!! on my SSD!

[Toddskins]

Title says it all.  I really can hardly believe it.  It took about 40 minutes and I was worried that something irregular was going on.   And I was watching my Drives meter on my C-drive and the Used space was shrinking while the Free space was increasing at the same rate.  I actually was worried that some irregularity had gotten triggered and was deleting files.  

Well, it finally finished and I have 12GB more storage.  Wow.

The Outlook .pst file is only 1½ GB in size when I export it for saving as I have done often times over the years.  So I really am baffled by how that much space was retrieved from Outlook 2007 compacting the .pst file.

Edited December 15, 2019 by Toddskins

[kakku]

That's very nice. My ssd is growing smaller so I could use even more space saving tips

Edited December 16, 2019 by kakku

[TheMaartian]

Two biggies are your User and Windows TEMP folders. Windows does NOT clean them up. You need to do that manually.

On my system, those subdirectories are:

C:\Windows\Temp

C:\Users\Primary\AppData\Local\Temp

Note that "Primary" is my user name on this PC. It will be different for you.

Delete all of the files in those 2 directories (except the couple that are open) and empty the Recycle Bin.

I do this regularly.

Oh. And if you've updated Windows (not 1909, but any of the earlier ones), and haven't removed the Windows.old directory, that'll get you a ton more free space on your OS drive.

Go to Settings -> System -> Storage

[Starise]

Thank for this.

I'm pretty sure that ACID Pro likes to use the User folder for loop storage on my C drive. 

Video really ate a bunch of mine up. ..........also recording in 24 bit instead of 16bit. 

 

[craigb]

I use this daily and on hundreds of computers.  The free version is all you need.  You can thank me later.   Just do yourselves a favor and uncheck all boxes before you install, then go to settings and turn off all the checkboxes there too.

Glary Utilities

The 1-Click Maintenance is where you want to start (I check everything except the trails).  Then, under the Advanced tab, you'll find a way to turn off things during boot-up that you don't need and you can delay things from starting right away to get up and running faster (any file-sync, like Google Drive, One Drive or Dropbox, is a good candidate for a delay).  For spinner drives (i.e., non-SSD) you can defrag from here, and you can even defrag your registry if you've been using your computer for a long time.

I've NEVER had an issue with their software!

Edited December 16, 2019 by craigb

[Toddskins]

On 12/16/2019 at 12:25 PM, craigb said:

and you can even defrag your registry if you've been using your computer for a long time.

 

Defrag the registry.  Now that's something that I had never thought of, and more than likely does apply to my situation.   Would that be beneficial even on an SSD?

'Gonna have to take a look at that utility you linked.

Edited December 18, 2019 by Toddskins

[craigb]

You should never defrag an SSD, it only shortens the life of the drive and doesn't speed things up anyway.  Defragging the registry is a totally different process.

[Toddskins]

2 minutes ago, craigb said:

You should never defrag an SSD, it only shortens the life of the drive and doesn't speed things up anyway.  Defragging the registry is a totally different process.

Yeah, I know not to defrag SSDs, but I was unsure if you (or that company) were saying that in the case of the registry, it is allowed.

So, are you saying a person can defrag their registry on an SSD?

[craigb]

Absolutely.  The registry is actually just one big file and, Windows being Windows, it gets gunked up (a technical term  ) over time and can end up with needing to be cleaned up.

[Starise]

Isn't there also a folder where Cakewalk stores old unnecessary files that can be cleaned up? 

My documents folder is a big hog. Any program I've downloaded  for the last 5 years still has the program installer there, also zipped Kontakt sound libraries I installed on other drives.....and multitracks I  downloaded I was concerned I might loose on the other drive so I kept them.

Add to that vst instruments programs that didn't let me choose another drive other than C  to store the sound files.

I have a 500gb C drive and I'm down to something like 8gb or less on the drive even though I have 4 other drives with stuff on them, and several large outboard drives. I'm not sure how it came to this exactly. I never would have dreamed I would be running out of drive space. One of my holiday goals is to put in a 1tb SSD I ordered a month ago and clone my C to it, maybe transfer a bunch of those zipped folders and programs somewhere else...or simply dump them.

I'm one of those who keeps Ozone 6,7,8 all on the same machine. Various versions of other programs all stacked up from 5 years back...tends to add up?