Why is 7 Gigs free space missing on restart?

[Hitsuin]

Hi everyone,

I'm writing because, I had about 2 or 4 gigs free space on drive D so I moved 15.7 Gb to drive C and immediately restarted. I didn't install anything, but instead of finding around 18+ gigs free upon restarting, I found I had 10.7 Gigs I double checked the moved folder and it still is 15.7 and this makes no sense to me.

I only restarted because I just uninstalled steam which I hadn't even used yet. I have not installed anything. AVG antivirus free can't find anything and drive D is apparently 1% fragmented. Does anyone have any tips. It would be greatly appreciated. I suspect this isn't the only free space missing.

Thanks for reading,
Lloyd

 

[UsernameIssues]

Welcome to the Seven Forums.

Is there a page file on that drive? It might get bigger as the amount of free space gets bigger.

 

[Hitsuin]

Hi UI,

Thanks for the welcome and for the suggestion.

Not that I know of, but then I have to say I don't know know much about page files. I did, however, search the drive for any updated files and within the time and nothing, single or together, totaled to anything like that. Also, if I'm understanding it correctly a page file would be on the OS' drive and not one used for storage.

Sorry if I'm late in replying, I'm in and out the house at the moment.

 

[Sir George]

Hi UI,

Thanks for the welcome and for the suggestion.

Not that I know of, but then I have to say I don't know know much about page files. I did, however, search the drive for any updated files and within the time and nothing, single or together, totaled to anything like that. Also, if I'm understanding it correctly a page file would be on the OS' drive and not one used for storage.

Sorry if I'm late in replying, I'm in and out the house at the moment.

You could try using Folder Size and see if it provides any useful information;

Folder Size for Windows

HTH

 

[xunile]

You can try downloading and installing the program WinDirStat. It is great for determining what is using up the space on your HD.

 

[UsernameIssues]

Hi UI,

Thanks for the welcome and for the suggestion.

Not that I know of, but then I have to say I don't know know much about page files. I did, however, search the drive for any updated files and within the time and nothing, single or together, totaled to anything like that. Also, if I'm understanding it correctly a page file would be on the OS' drive and not one used for storage.

Sorry if I'm late in replying, I'm in and out the house at the moment.

Yes, normally the page file is on the same drive as the OS, but a lot of people move it to another drive. See this article (the section named Put the Pagefile on a Different Drive, Not Partition). I was just asking if you had the page file on the drive that we are discussing. If so and you let Windows adjust the size of the pagefile, then the free space on the drive can vary. (Although - I would not have expected that big of a Windows managed page file right after a reboot.)

See if some of the tools others have suggested give you any insight as to the missing free space.

 

[Hitsuin]

You could try using Folder Size and see if it provides any useful information;

Folder Size for Windows

HTH

Thanks, Sir George. It's always good to know what can be used.

George is my middle name so I like your username. Xunile's looks cool and UI's says a lot. For those reasons, and your help, I'm going to refer to you all as "The Three Wise Men."

You can try downloading and installing the program WinDirStat. It is great for determining what is using up the space on your HD.

Thanks for this, Xunile. It helped me find that it was the pagefile's size is 7.80 GB the only thing is that I'm unsure what size it was previously. Hopefully, the the loss in free space since that reboot was due to it's current size and it's not being a scapegoat for something sinister.

Yes, normally the page file is on the same drive as the OS, but a lot of people move it to another drive. See this article (the section named Put the Pagefile on a Different Drive, Not Partition). I was just asking if you had the page file on the drive that we are discussing. If so and you let Windows adjust the size of the pagefile, then the free space on the drive can vary. (Although - I would not have expected that big of a Windows managed page file right after a reboot.)

See if some of the tools others have suggested give you any insight as to the missing free space.

Thanks, UI. I see what you mean about the pagefile increase in size. I wouldn't see it coming either, but now I suspect it was the 12-14 hours of MeGUI re-encoding the last two eps of Game of Thrones for my friend to see it. I hadn't used this laptop for stuff like that and my fan felt like a fan heater.

I see that I can set the size of it, but is there anyway to lower it but leave it open to grow again, if needed, so that windows doesn't crash?

 

[UsernameIssues]

You can set a minimum page file size for Windows to start with, then set the max using the info in that article under the section named "What Size should my Pagefile Be?".

 

[Hitsuin]

I was thinking that, but when it comes to messing with system files second opinions are good. Thanks for reassuring me.

 

[UsernameIssues]

You are welcome.

Glad that you found the probable cause of the missing free space.

 

[LMiller7]

I would hardly think this is due to the pagefile. Normally the pagefile size is set when the OS installed and it would only be changed if RAM is increased or the commit charge forces an increase. It would be very unusual for that to happen at bootup.

Were any of the files compressed? If so they would consume less disk space than was reported by Windows Explorer.
But without knowing the nature of the files involved this is all just guesswork.