FAQ – Low Disk Space Notification or Warning in Windows 7 : How to Disable, etc

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At times you may get a Low Disk Space Notification or warning popup from the right side of your Windows taskbar.: You are running very low on disk space on disk. To free space on this drive by deleting old or unnecessary files click here.

low disk space windows FAQ Low Disk Space Notification or Warning in Windows 7 : How to Disable, etc

Well the balloon notification is meant to warn you that you are running out of disk space. But at times you may get it for no apparent reason.

If you feel you are truly running out of disk space, you might want to clean up some disk space.

Windows Vista checks for available disk space every minute, but Windows 7 by default checks for available disk space every 10 minutes, and the pop up remains for 10 seconds. This is by design, keeping in mind certain performance issues.

So it is quite possible that your Windows 7 may never warn you about this, while you actually consuming disk space, maybe when you are in the process of pasting large amounts of data. It may happen that it warns you when it is too late, ie after 10 minutes!

These are the threshold levels when you may see the pop ups:

  • Free space less than 200 MB : You are running out of disk space on drive.
  • Free space less than 80 MB : You are running very low on disk space on disk
  • Free space less than 50 MB : You are running very low on disk space on disk
  • No free space remaining : You have run out of disk space on drive.

If you want, you can disable this Low Disk Check through the Windows Registry. Do do so open regedit and navigate to the following key:

low disk space registry 600x314 FAQ Low Disk Space Notification or Warning in Windows 7 : How to Disable, etc

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer. Create a new DWORD Value named NoLowDiskSpaceChecks and give it value 1.

You can also always use our Ultimate Windows Tweaker to do so easily.

It may therefore be a good idea to check your available drive space if you are planning to write large amount of data onto it.

You can use Disk Cleanup utility or CCleaner to clear up some disk space. If you are now  comfortable with SP1 and if you are sure that you will not need to uninstall the Service Pack, then you may wish to consider removal of several 100 MB of such back up files and reclaim disk space.

If you wish to analyze where your disk space has gone, you can check out Disk Space Fan or Space Sniffer.

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Anand aka HappyAndyK is an end-user Windows enthusiast, a Microsoft MVP in Windows Desktop Experience since 2007, and the Admin of TheWindowsClub.com, TheGeeksClub.com & WinVistaClub.com. Creating a System Restore Point before trying out a new software or a tweak is always recommended.

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  • victor

    Is there any method to specify different thresholds for different drives?

  • Brian Carr

    nice tweak. could you tell me how do you put it back to default setting?

  • http://www.thewindowsclub.com/about Windows Club

    Victor: I’m afraid, you cannot specify different thresholds.

    Brian: You can delete the created DWORD NoLowDiskSpaceChecks OR give it a value “0″ (zero) or if you are using our Ultimate Windows Tweaker, re-enable the option and click Apply.

  • Brian Carr

    @ windows club
    great thanks very helpful i used your Ultimate Windows Tweaker(which is a great well written program) so should be ok. i use a ssd for my paging file and have been getting the notification pop up for ages.

  • Brian Carr

    @ windows club
    i have had to re-enable this function after experiencing problems. it was causing windows explorer to *freeze up* after re-enable windows explorer had no problems fine.

  • http://www.thewindowsclub.com/about Windows Club

    Hi Brian,

    I have been disabling this notification ever since I remember. It is even disabled now with no issues. But since your experience differs, I think its good that you have renabled it. :)

    Anand.

  • Anonymous

    I have met the “low disk space” on my Windows 7 Ultimate recently. And I googled an article How to solve Windows 7 “low disk space” warning and solve my problem successfully. I share this article hoping can help anyone else.
    http://www.partition-tool.com/resource/windows-7-partition-manager/windows-7-low-disk-space.htm

  • Yuky-wei

    thx for sharing. good tool. thumb up

  • wormocious

    I do not have a folder labeled “explorer” under “policies”, can I create this DWord in the “polcies” folder for the same effect?