SSD space is disappearing. Troublshooted almost everything already.

A Guy said:

As I suspected, it only showed the difference of the hibernation file, not explain the difference in total space. You don't have any backup programs running do you? Any kind of recovery, backup?

A Guy

P.S. Thanks for the screen shots, very helpful to confirm there is some hidden space missing somehow, and increasing in size.

No backup programs running at all. No recovery or backup being done.

When I built this new computer rig two months ago, the only big things I remember installing on this SSD were the following:

-Windows 7
-MS Office
-misc small programs such as Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, AIM, Avast antivirus etc.
-Adobe Creative Suite (this was eventually uninstalled and moved to my other drive to free up some space since it was disappearing)

Other than this, nothing else was changed, unless Windows 7 by default has some backup program that runs in the background? Again, this system is only two months old, so it hasn't been around the block long enough for there to have been some freak program installed from years back that I may have forgotten. It truly is a clean drive with minimal wear and tear and very few programs installed.

I definitely concur with this statement though!:

P.S. Thanks for the screen shots, very helpful to confirm there is some hidden space missing somehow, and increasing in size

This "hidden space" that keeps increasing in size is what has constantly been increasing and eating up my drive capacity since I first noticed this phenomenom about a month ago.

Hello Steven and welcome to Seven Forums. My usual disclaimer: I'm not an expert at anything. :)

Just out of curiosity, how much space do you have set aside for the recycle bin and what happens to your available free space if you set it to 0%? Right click on recycle bin desktop icon > Properties. (If there's anything in the recyle bin that you might want to keep I'd suggest you save it before changing it to 0%.)

marsmimar said:

Hello Steven and welcome to Seven Forums. My usual disclaimer: I'm not an expert at anything. :)

Just out of curiosity, how much space do you have set aside for the recycle bin and what happens to your available free space if you set it to 0%? Right click on recycle bin desktop icon > Properties. (If there's anything in the recyle bin that you might want to keep I'd suggest you save it before changing it to 0%.)

I'm probably too illiterate on these matters to have known if you're an expert or not anyway .

Currently it's set to 5100 MB.

When I set it to 0, no immediately changes appear with any of the disk space.

Sorry, I forgot to mention you should reboot after changing the recycle bin's reserved space. (Told you I'm not an expert in anything.)

marsmimar said:

Sorry, I forgot to mention you should reboot after changing the recycle bin's reserved space. (Told you I'm not an expert in anything.)

Done. No affect.

profdlp said:

Until I read this...

SNsCPU said:

...No backup programs running at all. No recovery or backup being done...

...I thought you had a "Safe Mirror" problem going on:

syswow64 Safe Mirror

I'm posting this because it wouldn't hurt to check it anyway. (You may have to enable "View Hidden files and Folders" and "View Protected Operating System Files" in order to see it.)

Safe Mirror is used when you are using a differential backup program to maintain folder syncing. When you delete a file in the backup folder it also gets deleted in the source folder. To protect you in case of a goof it stashes a copy in the path mentioned in the first post of the thread above. I was merrily sorting out stuff in my backup thinking I was deleting things I didn't want any more and it was all piling up in the "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local\Safe mirror" folder.

Like I said, it wouldn't hurt to look. :)

Went all the way down to AppData\Local... No safe mirror folder exists.

Thanks to everyone who are trying to help! I really appreciate it.

profdlp said:

Try running Revo Uninstaller Free and see what the various built-in cleaners come up with. While I trust Revo (it's one of the few programs with a robust free version for which I was willing to pay for the "pro" version), be cautious with what it deletes. For right now, safest would be to just do the scans and check the file sizes for the stuff it finds - it may provide a lead on where your space is going.

Finished installing it, but having a hard time finding any scanning options. For the various cleaners it has on the left navigation pane, they only provide options for cleaning and deleting the selected item-- nothing for scanning.