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
Thank You CARWIZ ! Never would have figured that out on my own.
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.
You can delete the files on C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download
They were used to update and now useless.
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.
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!
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!
Here is what it looks like[ATTACH]
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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?
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