C: Drive nearing full when it's containing ONLY program files...

Ok I have a 120Gb SSD as my C drive, for the Windows and Program files while all my data are stored on 2Tb HD (D drive). Yet I'm now getting the warning that my C drive is 90% full.

When I look into it, the biggest folder is my own personal folder, which comes out to 60+Gb. Once I clicked into it, it's got a "links" folder (which again, is 60+Gb in size). Within the "links" folder, I have the following shortcuts:

Desktop
Downloads
iCloud Photos
Library
Receipts or Invoices
Recent Places
Recorded TV

Notice that Library shortcut & Receipts or Invoices shortcut both got a Folder icon w/ Arrow. Once I click into it, I'll be on my D drive. Funny enough these directories in my D drive would make up about 60Gb in total!!! So are the 'links' not properly setup hence I'm having problem like this? Any idea? Tx in advance.

Mayank Parmar said:

Did you check the size of other folders?
Also to make sure that you can make optimal use of your SSD, reduce the space allocated for recycle bin.
Right click on Recycle Bin and click on 'Properties'. Now reduce the size allocated to Recycle Bin by C: drive.
Also you can either turn off system restore for SSD and enable it on 2TB HDD, or you may reduce the storage size allocated to system restore by C: drive.

You can execute the following command in Elevated CMD
vssadmin delete shadows /for=c: /all

make a restore point after executing this command as above command will delete all the restore points.

Yes, I did check on the other folders, and they're all of insignificant sizes. What I don't understand is the system is REPORTING the size of two folders which actually resides on the HDD (D drive) BUT it's taking up space in the SSD (C drive) which looks totally weird to me...

I embellish the command to save a text file on my HDD. The location for storing the file can be whichever Folder desired.
vssadmin list shadowstorage>C:\shadow.txt

whs said:

You can only really find out, if you run WinDirStat. https://windirstat.info/

However, this will not show the shadowstorage. For that, you have to run this command:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

If you then add the allocated shadowstorage to what WinDirStat shows, then you have a full picture.

Hmm, I guess I've been away from this for too long. I've logged in as myself and I DO have administrator right, yet when I tried to execute the above command, I was told that I do not have correct permissions to run this command....

whs said:

You can only really find out, if you run WinDirStat. https://windirstat.info/

However, this will not show the shadowstorage. For that, you have to run this command:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

If you then add the allocated shadowstorage to what WinDirStat shows, then you have a full picture.

Sure enough, windirstat shows that there's a few 'hidden' directories, one of them being AppData and within that, surely enough some backup data from the Apple is taking up a LOT of spaces...

Tx all!