http://www.howtogeek.com/125923/7-ways-to-free-up-hard-disk-space-on-windows/
 
There may be a ton of crap on your hard drive installed by Windows and other programs. With a single drive, installation programs are not going to give you a choice of where to put that stuff. I ran WinDirStat on my drive and found an 8 GB file that was put there by the driver for a webcam that I had disconnected. Apparently it was trying to start the unconnected camera every few seconds and dutifully logging the fact that the camera was not connected to this log file for months. There is probably an 8GB hiberfil.sys file that is created (and recreated if you delete it) even if you never hibernate your machine. You can disable hibernation and that file will stay deleted.
 
A 500 GB drive is not big by current standards, but it should be able to hold Windows and Sonar without cramping. You can move all your Sonar projects except the one you are working on off the internal drive. There are tons of samples and loops etc. that install with Sonar and only samples that actually need to load in real time need to be on your fastest drive. You can uninstall any of the included softsynths, and any associated sample content, that you do not use. Moving these things can get very complicated because your initial installation tells Sonar etc. that they are still on your C: drive, so sometimes it makes more sense to uninstall, then re-install using a custom installation and pointing stuff you do not want on C: to your connected external drive. Have you tested your external drive as advised above to see if you can run projects stored there?

How about adding another internal drive?

I took some time to check my c drive to see what files were eating up the most space.
My c drive still has 144 GB remaining but I know the end is nearing with the more time I invest in recording....

Here's a quick rundown of what I have going on....maybe someone can suggest where I can cut out some of the fat.

Cakewalk projects 36 GB
x86 program files 21 GB
Program files 16 GB
Cakewalk content 13 GB
Windows 24 GB
User files 120 GB (the space hog)
(User files sub folders) ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️
My documents 10GB
Downloads 47 GB
Desktop 56 GB

The Downloads and Desktop folders look pretty fat. The contents of Downloads are good candidates for review. Do the files need to be stored on C or can they be archived on the external drive? My guess is that they can be archived if they are retained at all. Often times, companies use the Desktop as a convenient temporary space during installation but leave the files for the user to clean up. I suspect there might be some redundant files in your Desktop folder.
 
You could also move all the projects which are not active to the external drive and copy them back when needed. This is pretty easy with per-project audio folders.
 
Cakewalk Content could give up a couple of GB pretty quick by deleting/moving the Tutorial folders (unless you use them). If you do not work with audio loops, there are at least 4GB of audio loops usually installed in Cakewalk Content.
 
 

Thanks Scook....I will fool with this. Do you think adding another internal drive would be a benefit. I'm trying to add some long term usability to my system since "they" don't offer updated drivers for the VS-700 and Windows 10. It's looking like its Windows 7 for me for a while.

I'm just always afraid to delete things because it might come back to haunt me when I open older projects. I'm a file hoarder I think.

A second internal drive (either a 7200RPM HD or SSD) does give you options. Ultimately though, it just delays the decisions your are trying to avoid and increases the amount of live data to deal with. The external drive is fine for hording. There is a difference between hording (I too like to keep everything) and having everything online all the time. Of course, even the external drive needs a backup strategy if it is a sole repository data.

slartabartfast
http://www.howtogeek.com/125923/7-ways-to-free-up-hard-disk-space-on-windows/
 
There may be a ton of crap on your hard drive installed by Windows and other programs. With a single drive, installation programs are not going to give you a choice of where to put that stuff. I ran WinDirStat on my drive and found an 8 GB file that was put there by the driver for a webcam that I had disconnected. Apparently it was trying to start the unconnected camera every few seconds and dutifully logging the fact that the camera was not connected to this log file for months. There is probably an 8GB hiberfil.sys file that is created (and recreated if you delete it) even if you never hibernate your machine. You can disable hibernation and that file will stay deleted.
 
A 500 GB drive is not big by current standards, but it should be able to hold Windows and Sonar without cramping. You can move all your Sonar projects except the one you are working on off the internal drive. There are tons of samples and loops etc. that install with Sonar and only samples that actually need to load in real time need to be on your fastest drive. You can uninstall any of the included softsynths, and any associated sample content, that you do not use. Moving these things can get very complicated because your initial installation tells Sonar etc. that they are still on your C: drive, so sometimes it makes more sense to uninstall, then re-install using a custom installation and pointing stuff you do not want on C: to your connected external drive. Have you tested your external drive as advised above to see if you can run projects stored there?

Can you use this using Acronis to make drive clones? I have been putting off getting a USB 3 drive dock so I can clone my C drive and backup my samples and audio drive. I've used an external drive I the past to backup files from my laptop but now I have a desktop DAW and I know I need to address this. I don't need bells and whistles, just a way to clone the C and backup D and E. I'll get separate green drives to use... but what you have here looks nice.
 
J

Weeding through my "downloads" file I took notice to outdated program updates like patches from X1a, X1b, X1c, X1d......I'm using sonar platinum now, can they be deleted? The same for old ez drummer updates. It's only megabytes of files but there are quite a few of them.

Once installed, update files from Cakewalk and Toontrack do not need to be retained. Should you ever want to install X1 again all you need are the original install disks and updates X1c and X1d, all of which are available as downloads from Cakewalk. Toontrack updates are cumulative and available for download so if you wnat to keep any of them, all you need is the more recent series.
 
That said, if it were my machine, I would move all the contents of the download folder to the external drive. Chances are none of the files need to be available on the system drive. If there turn out to be a few files in the download folder that some application requires put them back as needed.