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My friend asked me for help with the hard disk space of his laptop that is almost full. I'm about to backup files from this partition to another, but I found out that %system%\temp is consuming too much space. How can I solve this issue? Is it safe to manually delete files here without using 3rd party software?

Edit

Total partition: 100 GB

Remaining: < 3 GB

Temp file consumption: > 54 GB

Also, why is that Windows (OS) let this to happen?

mr5
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    Just empty the directory if you want. Its perfectly safe to empty that directory its a temporary storage location. – Ramhound Oct 21 '13 at 16:42
  • @Ramhound are you sure that is really safe? Please see my updated post – mr5 Oct 21 '13 at 16:46
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    @mr5: *if no program is running, it should be safe to delete the temporary files*. A possible concern might be the fact that some of the temporary files were downloaded from the Internet and the programs might need to download them again. Or that they're the result of long computations which need to be done again. And so on... – Cristian Ciupitu Oct 21 '13 at 17:02
  • There's also another [question](http://superuser.com/q/612640/2357) mentioning: "When I run the Disk Cleanup utility that's built into Windows 8, it tells me that it can free up 53GB by deleting 'Temporary Files'". – Cristian Ciupitu Oct 21 '13 at 17:04
  • @mr5 - I am 1000% positive you can delete any file in that folder witout any issues. As for that other question, the user didn't post a screenshot, so I don't know what other things he selected but it was more then just the `Temporary Files` – Ramhound Oct 21 '13 at 17:13
  • @Ramhound k **.** – mr5 Oct 21 '13 at 17:18

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Yes, it is perfectly fine to delete the temp directory. You can do this manually and it shouldn't cause any problems, but if you want to go about it in a "safe" way, then simply run the Windows Disk Cleanup utility. It deletes TEMP files that are older than 1 week.

You can access it from Start Menu > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup.

Make sure you check the box next to "Temporary Files", then click " Clean up system files".

enter image description here

This will delete most if not all of the files in the temp directory.

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    On Windows 8.1, perhaps 8 too, the disc cleanup wizard is no longer a stand-alone item. How you get to it there is to right-click on the drive in your Computer and choose "Properties" and then you will see the option in Tools. – headkase Oct 21 '13 at 22:53
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    @Bill True. The link in my post is the article for all 3 (8, 8.1 and 7). –  Oct 21 '13 at 22:59
  • @Moses Thanks for the answer! Really appreciated :) – mr5 Oct 22 '13 at 06:59
  • @mr5 Feel free to mark my answer as correct if you were successful. Glad I could help :) –  Oct 22 '13 at 15:06