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siva
siva

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What was filling my 1 TB drive: developer and AI tools, not my files

#ai #productivity #docker #windows

My laptop has a 1 TB drive, and one day Windows told me it was nearly full. I hadn't saved anything big. So where did it all go?

When I finally measured it, very little of it was "my files". Most of it was stuff developer and AI tools leave behind and never clean up:

What Size on my PC
Docker Desktop's disk 77 GB
VirtualBox machines 36 GB
Hugging Face model cache 32.5 GB
Recycle Bin 18 GB
npm, pip, uv, Gradle and other caches 15+ GB

Why this happens

  • Package caches (npm, pip, uv, Gradle, NuGet, Cargo...) keep every version you ever downloaded. They are safe to clear: the tool downloads again what it needs.
  • AI models from Ollama, LM Studio and Hugging Face are several GB each. It's easy to try five models and forget four of them.
  • Docker and WSL disks (.vhdx files) grow but never shrink by themselves, even after you delete images or files inside them.
  • Editors and AI coding tools (VS Code, Cursor, Claude, Copilot) keep caches that rebuild by themselves.

What's safe to remove

The rule I ended up with: only remove what comes back by itself. A cache that the tool rebuilds on demand is safe. Your projects, documents, photos, and anything that exists only on this PC are not, no matter how big.

Some quick wins, by hand:

npm cache clean --force
pip cache purge
docker system prune        # read what it lists first
ollama list                # then: ollama rm <model you no longer use>
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For WSL and Docker disks, deleting files inside them is not enough; the .vhdx has to be compacted (with diskpart or Optimize-VHD) before Windows gets the space back.

The tool I built for it

Doing this by hand every few months got old, so I built Sparewise, a free Windows app:

  • It shows the drive in parts: what rebuilds itself, what can be downloaded again, Windows itself, and what exists only on this PC.
  • It only offers to clear things that rebuild themselves, each with a tested rule.
  • Nothing is deleted permanently. Everything goes to the Recycle Bin or an undo window.
  • It also explains a slow PC honestly (a nearly full drive, memory that is really short, a program growing for days), with no "RAM booster" tricks.
  • It's an MCP server too, so Claude, Codex or Cursor can answer "why is my drive full?" and free space, only within limits you set.

No account, no telemetry. Download: https://sparewise.app

What fills your drive? I'm curious whether it's the same suspects for everyone.

Top comments (1)

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dhruv_malaviya profile image
Dhruv Malaviya •

"Only remove what comes back by itself" is the right rule, and it's the one most cleanup tools get wrong by being aggressive in the other direction.

Worth adding that the .vhdx problem is worse than it looks: compaction needs the VM shut down, and Optimize-VHD requires the Hyper-V module, so on a machine where Docker Desktop runs in WSL2 mode the usual advice doesn't apply and diskpart is the only route.

The underlying issue is that these tools treat disk as infinite and none of them report their own footprint. Docker sat at 77 GB without ever telling you it was 77 GB.