Huge amount of mystery space taken up on Hard Drive

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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?

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

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.

ignatzatsonic said:

.......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/documen...erWindows7.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.

You could also try TFC Temp File Cleaner

TFC - Temp File Cleaner by OldTimer