Is there a way to weed out HD hogging files?

[altenbach]

There is that ever-growing folder C:\\Program Data\National Instruments\NI package manager and I wonder if there is a way to take a machete and trim it down a bit. (currently almost 15GB!)

My current computer has a relatively small system SSD (but large secondary disks) and I really want to free up some of this.

Do these large folders act more as a cache and NIPM will auto-download anything that is missing?

I currently only have LabVIEW 20 (64bit) installed, but it seems that e.g. the "packages" folder contains packages for any old patch version ever seen. These can't really be needed anymore!

Is it safe to delete some of those? Is there an automatic told to clean up some of these folders a bit? Is there a way to keep these files on a secondary HD?

[CL_eisenwr · Accepted solution]

You can clean off the files as long as you are ok with them potentially being redownloaded later. There is a KB about this, which also allows you to turn off the caching. Also main NI software packages, typically they take up 2x the space: the NIPM cache and the MDF\ProductCache. I have been emptying both as part of my installation routine.

[altenbach]

Thanks, this worked fine and more than triplet my free C: space. 😄

I don't need any local caching, because I am on very fast fiber anyway. 😉

[JKSH]

https://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-Package-Management-Idea/Add-ability-to-reclaim-space-taken-by-cached-pac...

[Scott_Richardson]

Package Manager 2022 Q4 released, which now removes uninstalled packages from the its "cache" directory (C:\ProgramData\National Instruments\NI Package Manager\Packages). Before this change, NIPM never removed uninstalled and upgraded packages from the cache, which might consist of an increasing amount of hard drive space.