HDD shows 300gb used of 400gb - actual files add up to just 100gb?!

[fredward]

Hello everyone, as my pc was starting to slow down a bit, I thought I'd check the C drive, where Windows 7 is installed.

There is about 25% space left. I checked the size of various folders, but which each sub-folder, hundreds of GBs appeared to be disappearing!

I understand there are 'hidden files' and folders, but 200gb of them?! Surely not!


If there are useless files I want to get rid of them and free up space - any help or advice would be greatly appreciated with this, thanks!


The screenshots make it clearer:

 

[Snick]

HI fredward,

Hibernation and Restore points eat drive space!
Hibernate - Enable or Disable - Windows 7 Help Forums
System Protection Restore Points - Delete - Windows 7 Help ...
Partition Wizard: Fixed C Drive Keeps Filling up for No Reason (Works 100%)

 

[SIW2]

fredward

You couid take a look with free space analyzer thing. There are lots. Glary utilities free does one. It will tell you what is in the user folder

Glary Disk Explorer - Search all of your local drives and individual drivers | Glarysoft

 

[townsbg]

You have to unhide hidden OS files to get a true look at space usage. You aren't looking at appdata. More than likely there's a lot there. Probably in the tmp folder.

 

[fredward]

thankyou, I used the Glary tool, and there were 2 hidden large files, about 50gb each -



1. pagefile.sys - apparently needed as virtual memory, don't delete that!
2. hiberfil.sys - as I have literally never used the hibernation option, I deleted this one, freeing up a lot of space


thankyou to everyone who replied


---


how to delete the hibernation file - What is hiberfil.sys and how to delete in Windows 7 free up hard drive space - Next of Windows

 

[Snick]

fredward

Glad to hear it!