How to reclaim GBs now

We often blame third-party apps or our growing pile of files when storage is low, but Windows itself can quietly consume a lot more space than expected. If your system drive keeps filling up unexpectedly, built-in Windows features are often the real cause. Here’s how to recover gigabytes of storage in just minutes.

System Restore

Whenever you encounter an unsolvable problem in Windows, System Restore can be a lifesaver, allowing you to return to a previous state. The problem is that Windows automatically creates restore points before updates, driver installations, and other system changes. It continues adding new points until the allocated storage is full, at which point it deletes the oldest ones to free up space.

To prevent this feature from using too much space, you can limit Windows to only keeping two or three restore points. Type Create a restore point in the search bar and select the corresponding result. In the System Properties window, open the “System Protection” tab, select your system drive and click “Configure”.

You can see the amount of space currently used by System Restore next to the current usage. The Maximum Usage slider indicates the maximum amount of storage that System Restore can consume: adjust it to limit the disk space that Windows allocates to System Restore.

Reserved storage

Windows reserves part of your disk as reserved storage to ensure that updates, applications, and temporary files have enough space to work properly and avoid update failures. By default, this consumes 7-10 GB and may increase over time. Since this placeholder helps Windows install updates smoothly and maintain performance, you should not disable it.

However, if your storage is extremely limited and you need a few extra gigabytes, you can free it up temporarily. To check how much space Reserved storage is using, go to Settings > System > Storage, then click Show more categories > System & Reserved.

Windows doesn’t offer a direct toggle in Settings to disable this feature, so you’ll have to use PowerShell. Type PowerShell In Windows Search, right-click the application and select “Run as administrator.” Then run the following command to free the reserved storage:

Set-WindowsReservedStorageState -State Disabled

Hibernation file (hiberfil.sys)

When was the last time you actually used your PC’s hibernate feature? If your answer is “never” or “a long time ago,” you could be wasting several gigabytes of storage, roughly the equivalent of your installed RAM. Hibernate preserves your open applications and documents so you can pick up exactly where you left off, but if you don’t use it, you can reclaim that disk space.

To check how much space this feature uses, you must first view the hiberfil.sys file. Go to the “View” tab, click Show > Hidden Items.

Next, click on the three horizontal dots, select “Options”, go to the “View” tab and uncheck “Hide protected operating system files (recommended)”. Then click “Apply”, followed by “OK”.

After that, right-click on the “hiberfil.sys” file, choose “Properties” and you will see the storage it occupies in gigabytes.

Next, use Command Prompt to disable hibernate and delete the hiberfil.sys file. Type Command Prompt in the search bar, right-click it and select “Run as administrator”. Then type:

powercfg /hibernate off Hit Enter, restart your computer, and the hiberfil.sys file will be deleted, freeing up valuable storage space.

Feature Update Rollback Files (Windows.old)

Windows keeps a backup of your system’s previous state so you can roll back a problematic update. This backup is stored in the Windows.old folder and includes old system files, drivers and settings, often occupying 10 to 30 GB or more. If your current update is working fine and you’re sure you don’t need to roll back, deleting this folder can free up some significant space.

Although Windows automatically deletes the Windows.old folder after about 10 days, you can delete it sooner if you are low on storage space. To do this, right-click the Start button, open “Settings”, go to System > Storage, click “Temporary Files”, check the box for “Temporary Windows installation files” and click “Delete Files”.

Keep in mind that deleting this folder only removes the built-in restore option. If you ever need to roll back later, you can always do so via manual installation.

Hyper-V virtualization

Have you ever used Hyper-V to run a virtual machine, test Linux, or experiment with development tools? Otherwise, you can ignore this point. But if you tried it once and never came back, the remaining virtual hard disks, snapshots, and configuration files could consume 10 to 50 GB, or even more if you created multiple virtual machines or snapshots.

Additionally, deleting a virtual machine from Hyper-V Manager does not always delete all associated files. Make sure you properly remove all unused virtual machines from Hyper-V Manager, then manually check the default virtual machine storage folders for remaining .vhdx files. Once everything is cleaned up, disable Hyper-V and other virtualization features from Windows Features to avoid unnecessary storage usage.

Lack of storage isn’t always because you’ve installed too many apps or accumulated too many files. Windows quietly consumes large amounts of space for features that most users never notice. The good news is that this storage leak is neither hidden nor irreversible: use the tips above to identify what’s consuming space, decide what you really need, and get several GB back.