Starting with Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced a visual space indicator bar for all drives, including network drives, which displays the available free space. Default color of the bar is blue, however when the space occupied on a drive (or partition) goes above 90% of the available space, the space indicator changes color to red, giving a low space warning.
If you find this annoying, here’s a quick registry hack to disable the indicator bar completely:
Disable Drive Space Indicator Bar in Windows
Open Registry Editor, and navigate to this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\Drive
In the right-pane, double-click click on TileInfo. Then, remove this phrase from the exisiting phrase: System.PercentFull;
Removing the string should give you something like this:
Before:
prop:*System.PercentFull;System.Computer.DecoratedFreeSpace;System.Volume.FileSystem
After:
prop:*System.Computer.DecoratedFreeSpace;System.Volume.FileSystem
That’s it. Open File Explorer, and the indicator bar should be gone. If you don’t see the changes immediately, just refresh or restart Explorer.
You can remove other properties from the drive as well:
- Removes free space information:
System.Computer.DecoratedFreeSpace - Removes volume format:
System.Volume.FileSystem
This registry hack works on Windows 8, 7 and Vista. If you don’t want to edit the keys manually, simply download and run the ready made files provided below.
Download: Enable-Disable drive space indicator
[via Instant Fundas]