Solved Large Discrepancy Found In Disk Size.

[bendipa]

I have an external 500GB used for back-ups. Recently, I noticed that the amount of disk space usage shown by Windows Explorer was far greater than I expected. It's shown as 264 GB.


However when I highlight all folders and files and check the properties I then see usage as 175 GB which is what I'd roughly expect.


Chkdsk G: showed no issues. So why is there such a large discrepancy?

 

[townsbg]

Try this. WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics Also look to see if system restore points are turned on for that drive. If so there could be shadow copies of your files and if you have large files that could be a lot of wasted space. Also check your cluster size.

 

[bendipa]

Thanks for that. I've managed to pin down the issue. There's a hidden folder on my back-up drive called System Volume Information. It contains a few files with names made up of long alphanumeric strings, all a few KB in size, except for one which looks the same as the others, but was 75 GB in size. I don't know where it came from.


I could not delete it from Win 7, not even using the Administrator account as authorization was still refused. Tried to change the ownership of the file to Administrator but that was refused too. Nor could I change its attributes from system/hidden to delete it. It seemed the only way I was going to get rid of it was to clean the drive and do a full back-up, which seemed a bit drastic. Then I decided to use my other system (Linux) to see if I would have better luck there. And sure enough it read the offending file and allowed me to delete it. So I now have my space back with no problems accessing all my existing back-up folders and files.

 

[jumanji]

Hi bendipa,

Glad that you could delete the System Voume Information folder using Linux.

One could use WinRar too in Windows itself. WinRar can show hidden and even superhidden folders/files.

Navigate to the disk, select the folder to be deleted , Right click > Delete files or click on Delete icon in the Menu bar.

If you delete System Volume Folder and Recycle Bin, these will be automatically recreated when you boot next with zero files/folders in it.

 

[townsbg]

That's the restore points and that was what I suspected what causing that increased file size. You might want to disable restore points on that hard drive or it could happen again. External hard drives don't need restore points as long as your main drive has it enabled. Disabling System Restore | McAfee Free Tools

FYI disabling restore points would have deleted that file.

 

[bendipa]

I make System Restore points regularly. Only keep one recent one. Always have done, and it's dug me out of a hole on a number of occasions. I would never consider switching it off. BUT as you can see from the image, only my C: drive is system protected, and AFAIK that's always been the case. The size of that partition is 56 GB.


Furthermore there's a 1.77 GB limit that I reserved for System Restore on my C: drive, so presumably it wouldn't grow bigger than that. So still not sure where this 75 GB came from in the first place. Anyway it's deleted now so thanks for your suggestion.

 

[townsbg]

I wonder why that file was there. If you re-read my post I didn't say disable restore points, just to disable it on the external drive.

 

[BrainDamage]

I believe Volume Shadow Copy also stores stuff in the System Volume Information folder. Even though this is not the C: drive, you could still have old versions of files kept by VSS. Disabling system restore on that particular partition ("turn off system protection", move max usage to 0 and click Delete) as townsbg has suggested would likely get rid of VSS in the "supported" way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Copy

 

[LeonSpinx]

howdy! I'm having a very similar issue on a new build and figured this would be a good thread to keep current.

My current build is a Ryzen 3900x, MSI x570 Gaming plus, 64 gigs Gskill ram, and a new 240 gig SSD. I read through this thread and downloaded WinDirStat and snapped this result:

So nearly half my sdd is these two files. Some mention backing up the pagefile, which I could do on an external hdd if that would help. I do have a 2tb nvme drive I'm hoping to use as my primary but I'm still not able to get the proper drivers for that, but that's another issue. Thanks!

 

[SIW2]

LeonSpinx

nvme-updates-win7

 

[townsbg]

There has recently been a discussion about the pagefile size so I won't go into that here. What size should my paging file be if I've got 4GB of RAM? I suggest that you read through it for more information. I post my opinions in that thread.

If you don't use hibernation you can disable it. How to Enable or Disable Hibernation in Windows 7 - Appuals.com I don't use it so I disable it.

 

[LeonSpinx]

LeonSpinx

nvme-updates-win7

Thank you, but that does nothing. I'll soldier on!

 

[BrainDamage]

LeonSpinx, disable the pagefile. I don't know what you're running on a 64GB system but I'll bet the computer never uses up the RAM. To disable the pagefile, go to Control Panel > System > Advanced system settings (in the sidebar) > Advanced tab > Performance/Settings... > Advanced tab > Virtual memory/Change... > Remove "automatically manage" and set everything to no paging file. That will do away with pagefile.sys

Hiberfil.sys is the hibernation file. It lets your computer go to hibernation/hybrid-sleep. That way, the computer is fully turned off when it sleeps, although you can still start it by clicking the mouse or using the keyboard. You can even send the computer to sleep, unplug it from the outlet, then plug it back in and resume the system.

If this is disabled, when you send the computer to sleep, it will remain turned on with fans humming and PSU in a low power state to keep the RAM powered, and if the power goes out you can't resume and the computer has to do a normal boot.

The natural issue here is that during hibernation and hybrid sleep, RAM has to be saved on a storage device (usually your C: drive). If this feature isn't important to you or worth up to 64GB space on your C: drive, you can disable hibernation and hybrid sleep in Control Panel > Power Options

 

[LeonSpinx]

LeonSpinx, disable the pagefile. I don't know what you're running on a 64GB system but I'll bet the computer never uses up the RAM. To disable the pagefile, go to Control Panel > System > Advanced system settings (in the sidebar) > Advanced tab > Performance/Settings... > Advanced tab > Virtual memory/Change... > Remove "automatically manage" and set everything to no paging file. That will do away with pagefile.sys

Hiberfil.sys is the hibernation file. It lets your computer go to hibernation/hybrid-sleep. That way, the computer is fully turned off when it sleeps, although you can still start it by clicking the mouse or using the keyboard. You can even send the computer to sleep, unplug it from the outlet, then plug it back in and resume the system.

If this is disabled, when you send the computer to sleep, it will remain turned on with fans humming and PSU in a low power state to keep the RAM powered, and if the power goes out you can't resume and the computer has to do a normal boot.

The natural issue here is that during hibernation and hybrid sleep, RAM has to be saved on a storage device (usually your C: drive). If this feature isn't important to you or worth up to 64GB space on your C: drive, you can disable hibernation and hybrid sleep in Control Panel > Power Options

And a hearty thanks for that! I solved the hibernation issue after my first post but your pagefile info was spot on and I now have a much nicer 180 gigs free rather than the 75 I started with. Thanks again!

 

[BrainDamage]

Don't mention it

 

[townsbg]

@LeonSpinx, disable the pagefile. I don't know what you're running on a 64GB system but I'll bet the computer never uses up the RAM. To disable the pagefile, go to Control Panel > System > Advanced system settings (in the sidebar) > Advanced tab > Performance/Settings... > Advanced tab > Virtual memory/Change... > Remove "automatically manage" and set everything to no paging file. That will do away with pagefile.sys

Hiberfil.sys is the hibernation file. It lets your computer go to hibernation/hybrid-sleep. That way, the computer is fully turned off when it sleeps, although you can still start it by clicking the mouse or using the keyboard. You can even send the computer to sleep, unplug it from the outlet, then plug it back in and resume the system.

If this is disabled, when you send the computer to sleep, it will remain turned on with fans humming and PSU in a low power state to keep the RAM powered, and if the power goes out you can't resume and the computer has to do a normal boot.

The natural issue here is that during hibernation and hybrid sleep, RAM has to be saved on a storage device (usually your C: drive). If this feature isn't important to you or worth up to 64GB space on your C: drive, you can disable hibernation and hybrid sleep in Control Panel > Power Options

No. Disabling pagefile is a bad idea. Some programs use it. However the OP can vastly decrease it. Again there is a nice discussion on this in the thread I linked.

 

[LeonSpinx]

No. Disabling pagefile is a bad idea. Some programs use it. However the OP can vastly decrease it. Again there is a nice discussion on this in the thread I linked.

I did only hugely decrease it, so to speak. Thankfully it was enough to install GTA V. Runs like a champ at 4k now! My old octo-core couldn't hack it, although it's a wonderful side machine that I'm using to type this.

Thank you all for the help! I'm trying to make a rather complicated build so I'll be sticking around here for sure.

Now if only I could get the nvme drive to be recognized...