Clearing space on drive C:, is it all needed? 12GB just with multiple Adobe folders

[Wurstkrapfen]

I'm using Adobe for a while an I am wondering if I might have some orphaned folders I could get rid of, because I got a lot of Adobe folders with almost 12 GB in total.

I got the following Adobe Folders:

5,6 GB in C:\Users\username\Appdata\Roaming\Adobe

4,4 GB in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe

1,6 GB in C:\ProgramData\Adobe

An that's not the app fold folders, Lightroom, Photoshop and Lighroom Classic still have their App folders.

Is there a way to clean this up or is this normal?

[Ged_Traynor]

@Wurstkrapfen I wouldn't recommend removing any of the files/folders you mentioned and yes it's normal, they are needed to run your Adobe apps correctly, if you're concerned about the 12GB of space been used, I'd recommend installing a higher capacity SSD in your system.

[D Fosse]

12 GB is nothing. If you're so low on space that 12 GB makes a substantial difference, you need to take more drastic measures.

A "normal" configuration of operating system and a standard range of applications, including CC apps, should not take up much more than 100-120 GB.

Start by running disk cleanup in Windows. Dial up the settings from the very conservative default. This alone will probably remove more than those Adobe folders.

Install the excellent free utility WinDirStat, which will tell you exactly what fills up your drive and where it is. You might be in for some surprises:

The green blob here is the Bridge cache. That can be moved to a different drive. The biggest red blob is the Windows hbernation file. Hibernation can be disabled in Windows, and then that goes away. The outlined part is my user account. All applications dump stuff here. Most of what's in the user account can in principle be deleted without breaking anything, except the Windows user account files - but it will disrupt things and you need to decide if you need it rebuilt.. But a lot of it will be junk.

[Wurstkrapfen]

You are answering questions no one asked. I'm running with 8GB left for years, 8GB is fine, if it's less there is trouble with updating photoshop.

Your suggestions have been done years ago when I setup my PC. 

My question is in the intial topic, that I could get a new PC or bigger drive is the obvious that came to my mind anyway, but is not the point of my question.

[D Fosse]

You want a clear answer? Don't delete them.

[Sulaco]

When you update Photoshop there will still be some data left from previous version. Even if you tick the "Remove old version" box when updating. These folders should be safe to delete, even though I am hesitant to give blanket statements about this. Delete with caution is always a good plan! 🙂

I don't know if there is an automated way of cleaning these, there might be an Adobe utility. But never looked for one, so don't really know. I usually look for folders with names such as "Adobe Photoshop 2022", that is connected with older versions. Also keep in mind; if something was lost when you migrated settings/files to a newer version of PS, here's where you can find them. Very handy if something gets lost(which often happens) when updating (such as patterns, swatches etc), you can find them here. So if you delete them, they are lost forever...