Windows.edb file is too big – How to fix

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I have Windows7 in my C: drive, and it is a small SDD 128GB disk, so every GB counts. I was running out of space and I started to investigate the folders using Folder Size app from http://www.mindgems.com/

I found that the Windows.edb file was taking over 3 GB of my space. This file was located in this folder “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows”

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Here’s how you can both reduce the size, and select a different folder for the file.

  1. Go to the “Change how Windows searches” option of the Control Panel

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2. You will see the “Indexing Options” menu. Click on the “Advanced” button.

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3. Here is where you can first use the “Select new” button to find a new folder for the Windows.edb file (choose a folder in a bigger drive) and then use the “Rebuild” button to purge the old file and start a fresh one.

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The Indexing Options will look unresponsive for a couple of minutes, but then it will go back to normal and you will see that the .edb file has been removed from the old folder and now a new (and much smaller) version of the file is present in the new folder.