HDD Filling up with Data quickly, Unknown Reason. Help Needed.

This is my first time ever posting here, but I'm desperate for help. A few weeks ago, I decided to ressurect my HP Envy 4t by doing your standard out of box restore due to problems before, which included this one. My HDD fills up on its own, a few gigabytes more taken away over the course of a few days, and it does this continually. When it was doing it before I restored it, my HDD was practically full. Once restored, it was clean again, back to the point of having the standard amount of memory free with a new computer. Ever since, it has been filling up once again. Here is a picture of a program I used to show percentages of where my data is being used, but I'm still clueless. Someone help?

Hi arlo1020!

I see you have an OS on this drive.
In many other cases when space on the hard drive, which contained the OS, is inexplicably filled up, it has been due to a virus or malware. You could run your antivirus program to clean the disk from any of the sort.
Also, check your programs, it could be that one (or may be more) are creating too much of temporary files too fast, for instance.
Another idea is to defragment the hard drive.

I hope this helps! :)

CK_WD

Thank you! Is there a standard free antivirus that is recommended around here?

I would start by running CCleaner to cleanup Windows and application temp files. (it doesn't touch any user data. No need to worry about it deleting any personal files)

I also see you having a whopping 2.3GB in the SWSetup folder. When you download HP drivers and apps for installation, HP stores the extracted files under SWSetup (but doesn't delete the files when done). You can safely delete the folder. If you ever need to reinstall the HP software, just download it again.

System Volume Information is where Windows saves Windows Restore points. This grows from 0 to a max size as defined in Windows. See How much disk space does System Restore require?.

I would next use your tool to look at the major space grabbers under Users (your data files), under the Program Folder directories, and under Program Data.

Some programs (like Adobe) can take a lot space (and not much you can do about it unless you choose to run something else, e.g. Foxit Reader instead of Adobe). But look at the program names taking the biggest amount of space. Recognize them? Do you need them installed?

After cleanup take another snap shot of disk space. Use it to compare to later snap shot to see where space is going.

IMO I wouldn't worry about antivirus at this point. Most likely above will answer most questions

To free up some space Start menu > accessories > system tools > disk clean up. Right click and select run as administrator. More options tab hit cleanup in the system restore and shadow copies area. That should clean up most of that 10 gb. As suggested you can also use ccleaner to clear up unneeded crap which will help with your users folder. As for windows what does your program show beneath that? You might also consider uninstalling some large programs but face it, 80 gb is not a lot today in the world of digital media. I think I know what is taking up the bulk of the space in windows and if i am right there isn't much you can do about it.

You might also want to turn off hibernation and decrease your page file especially if you have a lot of memory. Hibernate - Enable or Disable
Hard Disk Space - Free Up and Recover

Hi again arlo1020!

Most free antivirus programs work very similarly so it depends on which one you'd like better, you could check out reviews and ratings, use the program and in your decision leave it or remove it afterwards.
I would also agree with the other suggestions, as in cleaning your drive and the unnecessary system files etc., and as I mentioned above – temporary files! Still, what worries me is that, as you explain it, space is taken up full and too fast, so I would still also run the antivirus program, just in case!
But what @townsbg said is also true. Your C: drive is just too small for today's software so it's possible that it isn't any major issue but just that it can't hold massive programs; as the bigger the programs, the more temporary files and entries they have and the more space they take.
Still, try everything mentioned so far, and after you've run everything explained here and the filling up continues, it's just the small capacity of the drive that can't handle so many/big files and programs.

Best of luck! :)

CK_WD

I'm concerned that it's the winsxs folder which does grow massive. M$ should have put controls in place to prevent that from happening especially on smaller hard drives. That's a hard folder to deal with. How to address disk space issues that are caused by a large Windows component store (WinSxS) directory