Dell laptop memory problem

I have a Dell Inspiron15 3510 laptop Windows 11, newly purchased about 4 months, it supposed to be 100gb memory, but I have hardly any memory left about 500/600mb.
The laptop is not used much just one program installed hardly any documents etc. have done disc clean up history cache and it has not made any difference; I do not even have a printer installed.
If any can put me in the picture why the memory has been gobbled up it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance

Just a note, the same term for size of RAM/Random Access Memory and storage drives is the same, KiloByte, MegaByte, GigaByte or TeraByte. Your image is of the drive called OS (C:) and it has filled up with data. RAM is volatile, holds data only while running, having power to it and shutting down or restarting clears that out. The storage drive keeps the data until it is deleted, usually by the User. Try right-click of the C: drive in File Explorer, go to Properties and click on Disk cleanup button, should get some help. It would help to have screenshot of Disk Management. I have a nice 11" Inspiron from several years ago with only a 32GB drive, can't run last few Versions of Win10 but doing good with Linux. Looking on Dell's site shows an 11" and 15" Inspiron 3000 that has a 128GB drive.

As mentioned by Berton running the "Disk Cleanup" utility will help get rid of temporary files that accumulate from normal operations.

Secondly, I would turn off the hibernate feature since it takes up a lot of space.

To disable hibernate,
Click the start button or press the Windows key on the keyboard and type cmd
RIght click on 'Command Prompt' and select 'Run as administrator'
Type the following command 'powercfg /h off'

That should immediately free up several GBs of space on your hard drive.

Lastly you can download a tool such as TreeSize Free | JAM Software
This will give you an overview of where space is being consumed. You may post a screenshot of the output before removing data as not to remove important or needed files.

Peejay said:

I have a Dell Inspiron15 3510 laptop Windows 11, newly purchased about 4 months, it supposed to be 100gb memory, but I have hardly any memory left about 500/600mb.

Click to expand...

You meant
"I have a Dell Inspiron15 3510 laptop Windows 11, newly purchased about 4 months, it supposed to be 100gb storage, but I have hardly any storage left about 500/600mb."

Peejay said:

just one program installed

Click to expand...

What is the program?

Personally, I would not be surprised to find that the storage space is being used up by some sort of syncing or by a cache of some sort.
Do you log into an MSAccount that might be syncing files from elsewhere?

I agree that your next step is to run Treesize free to found out where the space is being used up.
How to interpret TreeSize results
You can post a screenshot of Treesize results here for suggestions about what is unusual and where to look next.

Disabling hibernation will free up some space while you investigate the problem but you'll be able to re-enable it afterwards [assuming that you want to use it].

All the best,
Denis

In this guide, you will learn the steps to understand the space usage on Windows 11.

Peejay said:

I have a Dell Inspiron15 3510 laptop Windows 11, newly purchased about 4 months, it supposed to be 100gb memory, but I have hardly any memory left about 500/600mb.
The laptop is not used much just one program installed hardly any documents etc. have done disc clean up history cache and it has not made any difference; I do not even have a printer installed.
If any can put me in the picture why the memory has been gobbled up it would be greatly appreciated.
View attachment 39365Thanks in advance

Click to expand...

There could be a number of reasons. I *suspect* that the Dell is either configured with 2 drives for storage, or else it is configured with 2 partitions on a single drive for storage. According to this page:


That thing has both a SATA interface as well as an M.2 interface for drives, and it can come with Windows 11 or Windows 10.

Now, after you bought it, did you (or another family member or friend) do anything like reinstalling Windows after buying it? Also, to be clear, was this bought new, from Dell or a retailer, or secondhand?

I have the very same Dell Inspiron15 3510 laptop Windows 11, just a few weeks old, and it only has a 128-Gb SS drive. My SSD is 45% used up. I use it to tinker and back up my older Dell Inspiron15 3552 laptop Windows 10 with a 500GB drive. MS puts a lot of stuff on new PCs, much is useless poop.

Hello,
I have downloaded tree size free and had a browse how to interpret, and it looks a bit to technical for me.
I tried to install this 'powercfg/hoff' but with no luck a message pops up as shown in pic.
Kind regards.

Peejay said:

I tried to install this 'powercfg/hoff' but with no luck a message pops up as shown in pic.

Click to expand...

The command is
powercfg /h off

Denis

The devil is in the details! And, as in many commands, going all the way back to DOS, a space tells the command interpreter when to stop reading the command, and begin reading the switches that tell the command what to do.

Cheers Mate!
TM