Are you curious to know how much space you have left on your hard drive? Many people are afraid of filling up their drives, and they don’t know where to look. But don’t worry, it’s quite easy to check your hard drive’s remaining space on modern computers, even with terabyte drives that are difficult to fill up. In this back-to-basics guide, we’ll show you how.
To start, go to your file explorer by clicking on the title of the file explorer on your Start screen or by clicking on the file explorer folder at the bottom left of your desktop. You can also search for file explorer in the charms bar and click on it.
Once you have the file explorer window open, make sure that the left panel with the different folders and drives is visible. If you can’t see that folder, click on the View panel, then click on Navigation Pane and make sure it is check-marked. You will then see the navigation pane on the left, where you’ll find your hard drive width, which is typically Drive C on every Windows machine.
If you have partitioned your hard drive, you might have more letters than Drive C. Your main hard drive, the one that your computer uses in which Windows is installed, is the C Drive. Some people partition their drives into two or three or four different areas, each with their own spaces.
To see how much space is left on your hard drive, right-click on your drive, such as the C Drive, and go into Properties. You will see a pie chart that shows how much space is used and how much space is left or free. The used space is in blue, while the free space is in another color.
For example, if you have a 532-gigabyte drive, and you have used 337 gigabytes, the pie chart will show that you have 194 gigabytes of free space remaining. You can also do the same with any hard drive or even a thumb drive.
If you are using most of your space, you can use the cleanup utility to remove some files and free up more space. You’ll always be able to see how much space is left on any drive, whether it’s a USB key, external hard drive, or any partition of a drive.
We hope this beginner’s guide has been helpful. If you have any questions or comments, or if you’d like us to cover a specific Windows 8 feature, please let us know. Don’t forget to check out our channel for more Windows 8 and Windows 10 videos.