After using your Windows computer for a year, you may be surprised to learn that there is a file hidden deep within the system drive that has been filling up from the very day you installed Windows. You don’t see it in Windows’ storage breakdown, and clean-up tools don’t flag it.

It could hold several gigabytes of driver files that the computer no longer needs, and it’s typically even worse on gaming PCs, where you make more frequent driver updates. It’s just how Windows was designed. However, you don’t have to live with this baggage.

Windows keeps every driver you’ve ever installed

It’s a safety net — but it never cleans up after itself

Your graphics card, audio chip, network adapter, printer, and every other piece of hardware on your computer needs a driver, and the drivers for all of them are stored in the DriverStore, a protected system folder. This is where Windows looks to pull previous versions of drivers when a driver update goes wrong, without needing an internet connection.

However, old driver versions are usually not removed even after a driver is updated. The folder is in the system path: C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository

This folder continues to grow as you update drivers because Windows never prompts you to clean it, and it’s access-restricted, so you can’t simply drag files from it to the Recycle Bin. This is what DriverStore can look like:

NVIDIA and AMD graphics drivers are the biggest contributors to this folder, since a single package can be above 1GB. However, audio, chipset, and network drivers also add to the size.

How to check if yours is wasting space

The size File Explorer shows is likely one you’ve never checked

Once you navigate to the DriverStore path, the size of the FileRepository folder gives a reliable gauge of what it carries:

• Under 5GB: normal for most everyday systems
• 5–10GB: worth checking, especially if you update drivers regularly
• Over 10GB: very likely carrying significant dead weight

It’s good to understand what this folder holds before you take any further action. For this, type the command below into an elevated Command Prompt:

pnputil /enum-drivers

It reveals all staged driver packages on the computer. Rather than reading every single line, observe the pattern. If you notice several entries have different dates but are from the same provider, like NVIDIA, Intel, or Realtek, they are most likely different versions that Windows has kept. Having several of these same-provider entries means there is a lot you can get rid of.

The moment you confirm a folder is big enough to clean up, there is just one recommended approach.

The safest way to remove old drivers

One free tool handles this correctly — everything else is guesswork

Resist deleting the files manually. DriverStore is a protected folder, and you may break hardware functionality if you try to work around it.

The one tool for this job is Driver Store Explorer (also called RAPR). This free and open-source tool is actively maintained and built just to help you safely manage the content of DriverStore. Download and extract the ZIP file, then run Rapr.exe as an administrator. After auto-scanning the DriverStore folder, RAPR provides a sortable list of all the folder’s contents. This information includes the driver name, provider, version, date, and size. You can quickly view where the bulk is by sorting by size.

One of the most valuable features of this tool is the Select Old Driver(s) button. Clicking it allows the tool to auto-identify and mark all outdated driver versions. You should still double-check the selections before deleting them. The goal is to look for older entries from a provider for which you already have a newer version.

You can then click Delete Drivers if you are satisfied with the selection. Driver Store Explorer avoids any drivers in active use and only affects redundant copies of drivers. What makes it safe is that instead of working around Windows’ own driver management system, it works through it.

You can optionally use Driver Store Explorer’s built-in Export function to back up drivers that you wish to delete. This way, you have a fallback plan if any peripheral starts behaving unpredictably after the driver is deleted. It takes just a few seconds to reinstall any removed drivers.

Windows Disk Cleanup also has a Device Driver Package option, but it barely touches the DriverStore folder. For a really bloated DriverStore folder, the only real solution is Driver Store Explorer.

OS

Windows

Price model

Free, open-source

Driver Store Explorer is a free tool that lets you delete old driver packages on Windows and clean the DriverStore folder.

Two other folders that can waste storage

If this surprised you, check these next

Two other locations on Windows follow a similar pattern:

There are two others that you may look at, but some extra context is needed for these:

The first is WinSxS, which looks enormous in File Explorer. It often gets to 10GB, but this is an inflated number because Windows counts some of its data multiple times since it uses hard links.

The hibernation file (hiberfil.sys) is another one that often grows as large as the system RAM. Disabling hibernation removes it, but this is an option best suited for desktops since they don’t typically use hibernation.

You could easily reclaim about 5 to 20GB of space between DriverStore and the other two folders in the table.

The longer you use Windows, the more this matters

DriverStore doesn’t feel like the traditional Windows clutter you’re used to, so you wouldn’t naturally think of de-bloating it. It’s a safety feature, but on systems you’ve used for a while, it’s a huge storage drain that needs some attention.

It may be a better use of your time to spend five minutes cleaning it once in a while than constantly chasing down random temporary files.