Solved 169GB unknown file in windirstat

[keredd]

Windirstat is showing a 169GB file and it is not restore points. This is on a secondary drive that does not contain OS files it simply stores all the program files. What could this file be and is there a way to delete it without having to reformat the drive and lose all my programs. All help is greatly appreciated.

 

[carwiz]

It's probably restore points or backup shadow copies.

 

[keredd]

I tried to going to disk clean up to delete the recovery points and the file is still there.

 

[carwiz]

Post an image of your system Advanced System Settings under the System Protection Tab and the Configuration for the disk. It will look like the image below. You can delete the restore points but the disk space is still allocated. You need to delete the restore points, turn off protection or reduce the size for the disk then reboot.

 

[derekimo]

That is listed under games, do you have star wars the old republic installed?

The .tor file ext coinciding with the same yellow on the left would suggest it's from that game,

File extension TOR - Open the .TOR file

And it seems to be a known space hog,

STAR WARS: The Old Republic - Swtor is using too much disk space

 

[keredd]

Check Disk cleared the space!

I am not sure what the issue was but after running a check disk (the full one that fixes bad sectors) the unknown file space completely disappeared! So although I never found out what the issue was at least it is resolved. Thank you everyone for your suggestions.

 

[keredd]

Correct. I do have the Star Wars game installed. I wouldn't be surprised if that had something to do with those unknown files. I rarely play it so I am just going to go ahead remove it. Thanks for your help.

 

[derekimo]

You're welcome, glad you got it sorted out.

 

[lurkinglurker]

Sorry to necro the thread, but I thought I'd just drop in to point out that carwiz's solution did actually solve my problem. Previously had 60GB unknown space in windirstat and now, after turning off drive protection, it has reached the extremely high value of 0 bytes. Thank you carwiz.

 

[ritcheyvs]

This was driving me nuts on my Dell I-570. Almost half of my 500G hard drive was occupied by "unknown" according to windirstat. I shrunk the space available for restore points (this worked on my notebook computer) but that didn't help. I uninstalled the Dell backup utility but that didn't help. I ran chkdsk/r and rebooted more than once but that didn't help. I ran PatchCleaner which recovered a little (20G) space but I still had that huge (almost 200G) of unknown. I had run DiskCleanup, but that didn't help because I missed a step.

FINALLY I ran Disk Cleanup (AGAIN) and here is the trick that worked for me: After DiskCleanup has computed the space it can gain back it displays a small window that lists the file categories you can delete (like Downloaded Program Files) with check boxes so you can select categories to "clean up". BUT, at the top of that window is a tab with More Options. Click on that tab and then check the "Clean up..." box for System Restore and Shadow Copies. And very soon (without rebooting) my missing space was available again.

Hope this helps someone.

 

[waelk78]

I agree, TreeSize Free is better than winDirStat

After spending weeks trying to find the missing space of 146GB, it turned out to be the printer spooled file which I was able to locate through TreeSize Free
I deleted it and it is gone

 

[tgm1024]

After spending weeks trying to find the missing space of 146GB, it turned out to be the printer spooled file which I was able to locate through TreeSize Free
I deleted it and it is gone

I used to use treesize all the time, but I've since switched to WinDirStat. Very powerful tool with a killer graphical interface.

WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics

 

[jack63ss]

Thank You CARWIZ ! Never would have figured that out on my own.

 

[sprezzatura]

Run WinDirStat as Administrator. The "Unknown" space will likely show up under the \Windows directory, or somewhere you can identify it.

I found 70GB in \Windows\temp\cab_*, which I backed up to an external file and deleted all but the last month's. There is also lots of space wasted by C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\*.log

These files were not deleted by the Disk Cleanup process.

 

[Megahertz07]

You can delete the files on C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download
They were used to update and now useless.

 

[AsokAsus]

I had a similar situation on a Windows 7 laptop where nearly 500 GB was "missing" on my system partition. The partition was full, but Windows Explorer was unable to detect the missing space, and the "windirstat" program simply showed a 500 GB "unknown" entry.

However, the TreeSize Free (Administrator) program (TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs) was able to show what the problem was, namely that someone had misconfigured the Cobian Backup program such that the source and destination directories were the same. As a consequence, it recursed until the partition filled up AND made nearly infinitely long directory paths that neither Windows Explorer nor windirstat were able to handle.

Perhaps needless to say, none of the Windows directory removal tools, including cmd rmdir, would work to remove this mess and it was with great difficulty that I finally managed to clean it up.

 

[AlanCinMD]

Years old and it still works!

For anyone looking for 169GB in Unknown space shown by WinDirStat, CARWIZ and ritcheyvs saved me. Old Dell laptop with 500GB HDD showed 169GB Unknown that cleared when I used ritcheyvs's narrative above, with the addition of making sure to select Clean System Files, or the More Options tab won't show up.

"After DiskCleanup has computed the space it can gain back it displays a small window that lists the file categories you can delete (like Downloaded Program Files) with check boxes so you can select categories to "clean up". BUT, at the top of that window is a tab with More Options. Click on that tab and then check the "Clean up..." box for System Restore and Shadow Copies."

Thanks Guys!

 

[skinnylegs]

I just tried this and realized that I had tried this to fix the problem before. I still have 169GB of unknon space and a full hard drive. I need help!

 

[skinnylegs]

Here is what it looks like

 

[skinnylegs]

I just ran WinDirStat again in admin mode and discovered that most of my hard drive is taken up by windows. The temp folder is taking up most of the windows space and it contains a boat load of cab files. anyone know what I can delete safely?