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

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:

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.

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> Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 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.

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

Get it from the Microsoft Store or sparewise.app. Guides for each of the folders above: sparewise.app/guides.

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

This post was drafted by an AI assistant for the Sparewise developer.