Missing Space on (C:) Drive

Vanquish12V said:

Hello everyone. I am new to the forums so please excuse any oopsies.

I found where this topic was discussed a few times here on the forums, and I did my best to be thorough and go through the suggestions.
Here : hard disc space missing
And here : Missing Space on Hard Drive

I have also gone completely through the totally awesome tutorial by Brink, save for a few things such as backup as I do not have that enabled.
Here : Hard Disk Space - Free Up and Recover

Even after all these lovely suggestions, I am STILL missing loads of space. What gives?

Now, when I go to My Computer, I am told that out of 111GB of my 120GB SSD, I have about 35GB free. However, when I go into my C: drive, select everything, including the hidden folders, it only comes out to 52.4GB. Now, I’m not crazy good at math or anything, but that just doesn’t add up. If that were true, I would have a lovely 58GB free, not this dinky 35GB.



I am aware due to how windows functions, that a 5GB fluctuation due to updates, temp files, and etc. is rather normal. But we are talking over 50 gigs here. Is that normal?

Thank you loads in advance!
Sincerely,
V

PS: I just did a fresh fresh fresh install of windows not too long ago, I want to say perhaps 2 months ago. I totally wiped my SSD twice and loaded a fresh install of windows. I didn't find any relics of versions past. I also don't use windows back up, nor did I before.
Also, I'll happily answer any questions and update this original post to reflect the requested information along with anything else I can think of that may be relevant/useful.
Also also, I have filled out the My System Specs section, in case that is needed. :)

Brink's tutorial "Option 1" is to download "WinDirStat", did you try it? My preference for obtaining file and folder size is "Folder Size", but either program will provide useful information on disk space usage.

Hello everyone!

Thank you very kindly for all the suggestions. I am going to answer each suggestion here, and also update my original post.

AddRAM said:

System Restore takes up space.
The Page File takes up space.
The Hyber file takes up space.

Turn them all off if you don`t use them, with 16 GBs memory, you don`t need a page file.

I had already gotten rid of the backups to system restore, and was only allowing 1.12GBs of space for it. I went ahead and disabled it entirely. No change.
Page File is now disabled. I am currently sitting at 51.2GBs of free space!
Hibernation is not enabled, nor has it been. I went through Brink’s tutorial and made sure it was disabled.

Callender said:

Well when you view the amount of "free space" available it's not very accurate.

See this thread: C: Drive Used/Free Space WAY Different Than Actual?

Post #7 is informative.

That was very informitive! Thank you so much for passing on the information!

whs said:

Adding up files you "see" is not going to give you a correct picture. Here is what I would do:

1. Run WinDirStat as suggested. That will give you a picture of most used space - but not the shadowstorage

2. For the shadowstorage, run this command: vssadmin list shadowstorage

3. Ger rid of the hiberfile. The command is: powercfg -h off

4. Reduce the pagefile to 2GB

I already went through Brink's tutorial to check the Shadowstorage and I deleted everything there.
I also made sure to check the hibernation situation, and that is all clear as well. :)


I am pretty satisfied with my current space, sitting at 51GB of free space. The issue, apparently was The Page File. Having disabled that, and restarted, the space was there!

Thank you all very kindly for your suggestions and all the help!
I will update my original posting and mark this as solved!