Solved Huge amount of mystery space taken up on Hard Drive

[bazmnaz]

Hi there,

The space on my hard drive has slowly been decreasing as of late, I am stumped as to why this is happening. At this very moment I have 4.62GB free of 682GB (750GB Internal Hard Drive). However when I open Local Disk C and view the properties of all the folders to see how much space they take up, it says 173GB. I have shown the hidden folders as well when viewing properties.
So I have no idea what is taking up the remaining 509GB of space.

I have done some research for this problem already but with no successful solution.
I have:
- Used WinDirStat, it says 192GB is in use.
- Used Disk Cleaner (which was able to free about 500MB of space)
- Used Disk Cleaner to remove restore points (I had some trouble getting it to work, it would continually get stuck on "Scanning: system error memory dump files"). After getting it to work finally, it cleared only 2.5GB.
- I have used Norton 360 to do a Full System Scan
- Deleted temporary files

Does anyone know what could be taking up this huge amount of space?

Thanks.

 

[DavidE]

With WinDirStat make sure you have Show Unknown clicked in Options.

You can also try TreeSize free, it may help see where the space is being used.
TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs

 

[bazmnaz]

Thanks DavidE, I just did a scan with WinDirStat and have 'shown unknown'. It is showing that 71% (481GB) has been taken up by these 'unknown file/s' but how can I see what it is, or how to delete it?

 

[DavidE]

I think these are files where the filename it too long and WirDirStat can't report them.

Try TreeSize free.
TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs

 

[bazmnaz]

Tree Size doesn't seem to be any help, it is only showing me the approx. 170GB of the 'non-unknown' data. Is there a way to show the unknown files? I have the free version.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I'd spend at least a few minutes manually going through Explorer, trying to find an unusually large folder--and then drilling into that folder's subfolders to further isolate the culprit folder.

Have you gone into C:\users\your user name\appdata and looked around?

If you try to configure System Restore, how much space does it say is supposedly allotted to System Restore?

What, if any, backup programs are you using?

 

[kma1717]

Hi Bazmnaz,

The disk space being used up could be related to System Restore points. I found this article that shows you how to tell if the System Restore points are using up space, how to increase/decrease the amount of space used for them, as well as the option to turn off the feature. Hope this can help.

Make System Restore Use Less Drive Space in Windows 7

Thanks,
Kevin

 

[bazmnaz]

Hi Kevin,

I have already used this method to clear my restore points. It didn't remove the 481GB of unknown file/s clogging up space.

 

[jumanji]

.......Have you gone into C:\users\your user name\appdata and looked around?.....

That is a good suggestion I would pickup. Try deleting the folders in Computer>C:>Users>Username>AppData>Local>Temp

How to: http://www.auxiliary.com/mis/documents/CleanTempFolderWindows7.pdf

Select all the folders/files, right click and on the Properties page check how much space these occupy before you use Shift+Del. If you use just delete then you have to empty the Recycle Bin afterwards.. Some folders/files currently in use cannot be deleted. Just say OK to retain those.

 

[DavidE]

You could also try TFC Temp File Cleaner

TFC - Temp File Cleaner by OldTimer

 

[bazmnaz]

Hi ignatzatsonic,

My AppData folder is only approx. 27.5GB. So I don't think any culprit would be in the AppData folder seeing as there is some unknown file/s taking up 481GB.

Also, to answer your other question, I do not currently have any restore points, as I have recently cleared them all thinking this was the initial problem, which it did not turn out to be. I also have 0 bytes allocated for system restore points. I hope this answer was in relation to your question.

I have also already previously cleared my temp folder. It currently 22MB in file size.

I am not using any back up programs. To back up my files, I copy my whole user to an external hard drive once a week. Usually takes about an hour which works fine for me.

I am going to try an Error-checking scan overnight on the Local Disk C and see if I have any luck with that (Computer > Local Disk C > Right Click > Properties > Tools (tab) > Error-checking).

 

[DavidE]

Here is another program that was recommended in another thread.
I've never used it, but you can try it if you're interested.
Antibody Software - WizTree finds the files and folders using the most disk space on your hard drive

 

[jumanji]

All throughout we never had a picture of Windows Disk Management.Please post one clearly showing capacity , Free Space and % Free in the drive list..

Do you have Bitlocker encryption turned on? If it is chugging along for the first time it will lock a lot of space till it completes encryption.

What all Norton programs have you installed? These can notoriously create their own hidden recycle bins and hidden space for backups.

Windows Media player can also gobble up space

Check this: <Unknown> again … | WinDirStat propaganda blog

"I had to leave windirstat running for approx 9 hours (seriously!) and I discovered that Windows Media Player had decided to continually cache millions of .jpg’s for my very (VERY!) large music collection inside its local folder on the Windows system
I’ve turned the WMP library and cache function off (I never use it for music) and added the folder to ‘CCleaners’ list of user added locations to clean out
I’ve just run CCleaner and I’m slowly watching over 50 gig’s of useless images, duplicated hundreds of times, being slowly banished. I have a slowly expanding hard drive!
Apparantly there’s some glitch in WMP on Windows 7 64 bit machines whereby the program just continually creates album art non stop the whole time the machine is on. No solution for it at this time"

"Running WDS through CMDasSys.exe allowed me to find my culprit: gigs and gigs of Microsoft Media Player (an application I never use) art cache files. They were tricky to delete — I booted into Linux and mounted my C drive there — but I have my space back! Offending files were at
C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache
Good riddance. "

I have no clue on running WDS through CMDasSys.exe. Perhaps DavidE could help you on it.

I have just presented some information gathered by me.

 

[DavidE]

I have no clue on running WDS through CMDasSys.exe. Perhaps DavidE could help you on it.

No, i also have no clue and can't help.
That's a good find, and may help solve some of the issues we see reported here for "missing space" !

 

[bazmnaz]

hi jumanji,

Is this the photo you are wanting to see? I also posted a photo of the WinDirStat scan of my computer, I will post again, this shows the capacity and % of space free etc.

I'm not quite sure what Bitlocker Encryption is, but as far as I know I don't have it on.

I have Norton 360 21.6.0.32 installed.

I also had a look at windows media player, but I didn't have any luck finding that folder location... I found something similar but that folder only took up a few kB's.

I'm not quite sure what that WDS thing is either, could someone explain it? Or suggest whether I should use it? I gather it is something similar to WinDirStat?

thanks

 

[DavidE]

Here is another program that was recommended in another thread.
I've never used it, but you can try it if you're interested.
Antibody Software - WizTree finds the files and folders using the most disk space on your hard drive

I just downloaded WizTree portable and ran it.
I can see the folders and files in the System Volume Information folder with this program, and delete is an option for some of the files.

Give it a try and see what is in your System Volume Information folder.

 

[whs]

Do you play StarWars on this machine.

 

[jumanji]

WDS is nothing but WinDirStat. Your Windows Disk Management does not show the drive listing on the top which I wanted to see. Anyway I feel all that is not going to help and we are all still groping in the dark.

DavidE has suggested WizTree. Try it.

Then try TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs

"521 Gigs of Unknown Space According to WinDirStat "

"OK, I found the answer using TreeSize, there are three directories in the Profile folders that have file name over the 260 character limit, which is why I wasn't seeing the files.Now I just have to figure out how to delete these directories." The user also found the way to delete those directories. 521 Gigs of Unknown Space According to WinDirStat

If all these draw a blank, I would suggest that you examine your drive - each and every folder and subfolder - booting with a Live Linux pen drive putting Windows to sleep.

 

[bazmnaz]

GOOD NEWS! I FOUND THE PROBLEM!

Thankyou DavidE who suggested to download WizTree, it did the trick! I did a scan of my C drive and it found AND showed exactly where the problem was. It did take a few times to scan, it kept freezing up.

C:// > SysWOW64 > config > systemprofile > AppData > Local > Microsoft > Windows > Temporary Internet Files > Content.IE5

This folder contains THOUSANDS of files ranging up to 21MB each. This is what is taking up my hard drive space!

I am having trouble finding a way to remove this however. Any suggestions? Windows explorer keep freezing and not responding when I get to the 'systemprofile'.

 

[jumanji]

Glad you found the culprit. Also try using Treesize Free also as indicated in my post #18. Just for us know which are all the programs that are effective in dealing with such situations.

I had also indicated therein that the user had found a way to delete those files. 521 Gigs of Unknown Space According to WinDirStat

This is it:

"The final solution was using Treesize to find the directory with the missing data.

I then used Robocopy Purge feature to regain the space as follows:

MKDIR "C:\empty"

Creates an empty directory.

ROBOCOPY "C:\empty" "c:\ProblemDir" /PURGE

Worked great and I have my space back."

If it doesn't help boot from a live Linux pendrive putting Windows to sleep, access your drive, navigate to the folder and delete the offending files/folders in Linux.

( My ADSL internet speed has gone to dogs since yesterday night with most websites not accessible - abysmally low speeds and my ISP is still to set it right. Luckily Seven Forums is loading but taking a lot of time. Resulted in my double posting since I couldn't make out whether my post had gone through to the destination. I am on datacard EVDO but still no better. Looks like a gateway problem.)