How to Increase C Drive Space in Windows Laptop?

If you find your computer C drive is running out of space, try this simple trick to increase C drive space in Windows and recover GBs of space.

This is a simple tip on how to increase C drive space. Gone are the days when we had a maximumย 4GB hard disk size, (Windowsย 98 time).
These days 1 TB (terabyte) to 5 TB hard disk sizes have become normal. Windows 98 hardly took 400 to 500 MB of hard disk, after installation. Windows 8.1 installation file itself is more than 3.5 GB.

You might be thinking from where can we get more space, especially for C drive? Have you thought about how much hard disk space windows allocate to the recycle bin?

Recycle bin is akin to a dust bin. Whatever files you delete from windows, the files get deleted to recycle bin. This is a safety measure only, accidentally deleted files, can be easily recovered from the recycle bin. Since windows do not delete files from your system unless you empty the recycle bin.

Windows by default allocate 10% of your C drive space to recycle bin. Note ten percent of your C partition. So if you have allocated 100 GB for the C partition. A whopping 10Gb (10% of 100GB) gets allocated to the recycle bin. Now that’s a lot of space.

I don’t think anyone would keep that many deleted junk files in the recycle bin. Deleted files in the recycle bin also in turn fragment your C partition and slow down your system.

I personally do not allocate more than 1GB for the recycle bin. I feel even that is also more than sufficient.

You can gain a lot of free space and increase C drive space, by simply re-allocating space to recycle bin.

Increase C Drive Space in Windows

To increase hard disk space, re-allocate less space to re-cycle bin.

how to increase C drive space

::: On the desktop, right-click on the Recycle bin icon.
::: From the context menu, click on properties.
::: Under “Recycle Bin location” click and select your “C” drive
::: Click to choose “Custom size”
::: Under Maximum size (MB) enter the amount in MB you want to allocate for the recycle bin
Click on “Apply” and exit.

That’s it, you have just gained a lot of free space and increased hard disk space. If your C partition is 100 GB in size, and you allocate 1GB to recycle bin, you gain a whopping 9GB of hard disk space for your C drive.

The above method shows you how to gain maximum and increase C drive space in Windows. Additionally, you can increase C drive space by regularly cleaning junk files in Windows.

Uninstall programs that you no longer use. See our guide on how to uninstall a program properly from your laptop PC.