Computer is telling me my C drive is full or out of space.
Issue
Computer is telling me my C drive is full or out of space.
Cause
If your computer is reporting that the C drive, or your primary hard disk drive is full or out of space, you're likely encountering one or more of the situations listed below.
- Too many files are on the hard drive occupying all the space.
- Hard disk drive is not big enough to accommodate all your needs.
- Drive is failing and sections of the drive are being marked as bad.
Answer
To resolve this issue follow each of the below steps. Often cleaning the hard disk drive of old files is usually enough.
Clean up the hard disk drive
Need larger hard disk drive
If you find yourself frequently running out of disk space or the above recommendation did not help resolve your issue, it may be necessary to upgrade or add another hard disk drive to your computer.
Add another hard drive
If you have a decent sized hard drive (larger than 100GB for more recent computers), but are running out of disk space, adding a new hard disk drive will give you additional storage without having to erase the existing hard drive. This could be either an internal or external hard disk drive.
Replace current hard drive
If your hard disk drive is less than 100GB, you may want to consider replacing the current hard disk drive with a new hard disk drive. Unfortunately, if you do decide to do this, you will need to reinstall the operating system and all the programs again.
Hard disk drive is failing
Disk drive utilities such as Windows scandisk, will mark sections of the hard disk drive as bad if errors are encountered during a scan. Sections that are marked will be skipped and have no data stored on them, which can cause the hard disk drive to run out of space if large portions of the drive are marked.
If you're running Microsoft Windows when running scandisk, check the option "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors." Additional help and information about running scandisk can be found on our scandisk help page.