IDE 2.x - If your main drive is running out of space...

[KurtE]

For awhile now my SSD drive (c was close to running out of space (like < 1% free).
Dell tools said it could not do backups...

For a while now I have been moving stuff off of the C drive to the larger hard drive d: but still was not getting very far.

Finally I went to the Arduino created directory Arduino15 which on my Windows machine is at:

C:\Users\kurte\AppData\Local\Arduino15

And looked at the staging subdirectory and found it had a ton of large files contained within in it.
Searching around I found Arduino threads like:

Board manager zip files bloat

I confirm that you can safely delete them. They are helpful in the case where you remove and then reinstall a boards platform, since Arduino IDE will be able to quickly install it from the staged ZIP file instead of having to do a long download from the Internet. However, that is a rare use...

forum.arduino.cc

Where I found that it is safe to delete all of this stuff. I did not totally clear it out, but deleted all of the stuff earlier than 2025, plus some other boards stuff
like ESP32. I could probably delete all of it, but at least now I am out of the RED

 

[joepasquariello]

Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious, but have you checked your recycle bin? If you are using Windows Explorer to delete folders on C: after you move them to D:, you may have copies of those folders in the recycle bin (on C.

 

[KurtE]

Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious, but have you checked your recycle bin?

Been there, done that

But try looking out yours, and do a properties on staging. Even after I cleaned a ton out of it it still shows:

 

[joepasquariello]

I have barely used IDE 2.x, but my staging folder has almost 1 GB. If I understand correctly, I can delete all of these files, right?

 

[KurtE]

I have barely used IDE 2.x, but my staging folder has almost 1 GB. If I understand correctly, I can delete all of these files, right?

yes

 

[jmarsh]

It will be a miracle the day the Arduino IDE starts to clean up after itself.

 

[mborgerson]

I must have made some good decisions on my last Arduino install---my staging folder is only 321MB. I'm at Arduino 2.3.6. With a Gigabit internet connection, the advantages of staging .zip files are probably minor.

 

[KurtE]

It will be a miracle the day the Arduino IDE starts to clean up after itself.

There might actually be a miracle

I asked about this on Arduino forum and turns out there is at least a partial fix for this:

Arduino IDE 2.x - needs to do disk cleanup

There is an Arduino CLI command: arduino-cli cache clean https://arduino.github.io/arduino-cli/latest/commands/arduino-cli_cache_clean/ However, Arduino IDE does not utilize that feature. Arduino CLI manages the download cache, so proposals for changes to how the cache is managed would...

forum.arduino.cc

There is an Arduino CLI command: arduino-cli cache clean

 

[shawn]

I saved about 21GB! Thanks, @KurtE!