Applicable to: Microsoft Windows 11. 10, 8 and 7 operating systems
Here’s a question from our reader Kara, who wanted to save disk space by deleting system performance data from her Windows 10 computer:
Looks like my C partition drive is quite full and around 10 GB of free space are now left free on the physical disk. I have just spotted a folder called C:\PerfLogs , with just one folder inside it and no visible data. Is it safe to delete it?
Thanks for the question. . Readers wanting to get rid of the Perflogs directory are typically trying to save disk space. We’ll break down the topic and explain what are Performance Logs in Windows, and then see what can we do about them.
What is the PerfLogs folder in Windows 11, 10 & 7?
PerfLogs (Performance Logs) is a Windows system generated folder, that stores information on system issues and performance data and logs. Those are used to feed performance related reports. The folder is typically available in your computer boot partition (typically C:\). It is possible to move / relocate the PerfLogs folder to a new directory, however, from disk space perspective the gains are minimal.
Is it safe to delete the PerfLogs folder?
Although technically possible to remove the folder, that’s not recommended! On a broader sense, we don’t recommend to modify any system folders. If you still decide to remove the PerfLogs folder, be aware that Windows will re-create it every time you delete it. One of the reasons for that is that important Windows features like Performance Monitor make use of this performance report file to provide detailed performance information.
How much space i will save if i remove PerfLogs?
The folder hardly uses any disk space, so we’d recommend you to leave it as is. If you are looking to optimize your disk space, our first recommendation would be to use the out of the box Disk Cleanup utility. You can launch the cleanup by right clicking your drive partition (C, D and alike), then go to the General tab and hit the b button, Your next step would be to define which files to delete to gain disk space. Typically, downloaded programs and temp internet files would be your first candidates for deletion. Using Disk Cleanup You could also go ahead and delete system files such as Windows Update un-needed files.
How to hide PerfLogs?
One possible solution you might want to explore is simply hiding the PerfLogs folder, so it’s not visible to users using the computer.
If that sounds like a good solution for you, follow these steps:
- Open the File Explorer
- Navigate to your PerfLogs folder location (typically C).
- Right click and then choose Properties.
- Then navigate to the General tab, then in the Attributes section, select Hidden.
- Hit Apply.
- Select “apply the change to this folder only”.
- Then hit OK.
- That’s it, the folder will be hidden from now.
Next ensure that hidden folders are not visible.
- Open File Explorer.
- Hit View.
- Then un-check the Hidden Items box.
- Voila 😉
How to remove Performance Logs content?
You can delete performance related data from the Performance Monitor:
- Hit Windows + S to open the Search command.
- Type Performance Monitor.
- Hit File, then Options.
- Hit the Delete Files button
- Hit OK to close the dialog.
No access to the PerfLogs directory?
Access to the operating system files is restricted to administrators; so in case don’t have admin rights on your PC, it’s not likely you’ll have been granted any access to your OS files.
OK, but i still need to cleanup some disk space?
Use a simple tool such as TreeSize Free to analyze your drive and help you find those big hitters that are consuming most of the disk space available. Hint: those are typically the recycle bin contents, browser cache, downloaded files and programs, windows update files and so forth.