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    What's using up all my disk space?

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Peon, Mar 1, 2016.

  1. Peon

    Peon Notebook Virtuoso

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    Somehow, over the course of the past few months my disk space usage has gone from ~100 GB to 518 GB. And over the course of that period of time, I've actually been uninstalling software and deleting tons of stuff as well.

    To make matters worse, Disk Cleanup can't find anything...
     
    Peon, Mar 1, 2016
    #1
  2. tijo

    tijo Sacred Blame

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    Try using windirstat and see what that tells you.
     
    tijo, Mar 1, 2016
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  3. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    HTWingNut, Mar 1, 2016
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  4. StormJumper

    StormJumper Notebook Virtuoso

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    It sounds like cache, temp files are taking the space. Otherwise you got a malware infection.
     
    StormJumper, Mar 1, 2016
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  5. tijo

    tijo Sacred Blame

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    Some program not properly deleting its cache is what I'd bet on first, there are a surprising amount of programs that can't seem to take care of their cache files properly if they aren't closed properly and so on.
     
    tijo, Mar 1, 2016
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  6. pete962

    pete962 Notebook Evangelist

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    Maybe system restore, if I had to make wild guess, few gigabytes for each and it's done automatically before each win update and at least once a week, otherwise.
    Check what % of hdd is allocated to it and use CCleaner to delete points you don't want?
     
    pete962, Mar 1, 2016
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  7. Peon

    Peon Notebook Virtuoso

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    ...And now I'm up to 539 GB :mad:

    Time to try everyone's suggestions.

    The WinDirStat results were quite mystifying:

    WinDirStat.png
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 3, 2016
    Peon, Mar 2, 2016
    #7
  8. alexhawker

    alexhawker Spent Gladiator

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    alexhawker, Mar 3, 2016
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  9. djembe

    djembe drum while you work

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    Try running a health check with HD Tune or Hard Disk Sentinel. It's possible that your storage media got damaged and is incorrectly reporting what is used and free space.
     
    djembe, Mar 3, 2016
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  10. yjacket2001

    yjacket2001 Notebook Geek

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    It sounds to me like you have multiple ssd drives set up in Raid 0, and you are not using Win7 Pro with the appropriate Intel management software. If it applies to you and all the other methods above do not work, check it out. You'll still need to get new harddrives and Win7 Pro, but you will be on track anyway. Good luck, especially if it is a non-Intel virus.
     
    yjacket2001, Mar 3, 2016
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  11. Peon

    Peon Notebook Virtuoso

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    Well TreeSize Free managed to find the answer:

    TreeSize Free.png

    ...Except System Restore is (and always has been, as far back as I can remember) off, so shouldn't System Volume Information be empty? Or is there something other than System Restore that uses this folder?
     
    Peon, Mar 4, 2016
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  12. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    You can click the triangle next to System Volume Information and will show all subfolders and files. But System Volume Information sure shouldn't be that large.

    Search for "Advanced" and select "View Advanced System Settings"
    Select "System Protection Tab"
    Choose "C:" Drive and Click "Configure"
    Disable it or reduce size and even "Delete all restore points for this drive"

    If you don't need/want them just get rid of them. Never seen one that big. Usually it defaults to 5% of drive, not 40%... :eek:
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2016
    HTWingNut, Mar 4, 2016
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  13. Peon

    Peon Notebook Virtuoso

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    I don't need them at all - in fact, I'm actually in the process of getting rid of this PC as I just got a new laptop.

    But as part of the migration, I need to do a P2V conversion and then move the resulting VM over to the new laptop, and that's much easier with 150 GB of data than it is with a 500+ GB of data ;)
     
    Peon, Mar 5, 2016
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  14. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    So were you able to free up space?
     
    HTWingNut, Mar 5, 2016
    #14