Help! (Windows 10) Space on C drive (partition) inexplicably disappearing again!

[ObviouslyNotAGolfer]

This happened a couple years ago. I watched as the available space on this partition (150 Gb of a total 1 Tb) dwindled and I eventually was faced with error messages, crashes, freezes, and other unpleasantness. I tried optimizing the disk--or whatever it is called, and this was of minimal help. I tried to delete everything not absolutely essential, but it bought me very little. For the most part, I only keep software and a few miscellaneous items on that partition, while most of my data is on the D partition and external drives. I called my tech but he was not able to answer the issue over the phone so I took it in. He said he installed a bunch of updates and he said the problem resolved itself. Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do to avoid losing another day of work? I don't understand the bit about the updates--I don't think Windows 10 users have much of a choice (??). It always just does them whenever it wants.

EDIT: I updated, and lost even more space. I turned off System Protection and gained only a few GB.

The advice I am getting--even on the Microsoft site--is pretty useless--"Well, you can try and find those hidden partitions Microsoft puts on your drive. You can try to delete them, but that is a minefield." Apparently, some are important, but some are just worthless space consumers (???!!!)

I can't get answers anywhere, and now my tech, who I trusted for years has retired, and I am facing impending computing disaster!

[Lan Mandragoran]

I'm very confused by your post.

Can you lay it out a bit more systematically?

Your C drive space is just disappearing? As in your checking disk management and the actual partitioned space is reducing? Or your just viewing the space in file explorer and its less every time you look at it?

I'll try to help but your best bet if the data is actually valuable is to take it to someone technical in person.  More technical than geek squad on average is :P.

My generic advice for people not technically inclined that want to fix it themselves.

#1.) externally backup the data.
#2.) get whatever licensing you need off it and do a clean reinstall. Windows 10 has tools to do this for you. It's pretty easy, google will find it for you with "windows 10 reset".

That will fix any software related problem =].

[ObviouslyNotAGolfer]

Can you lay it out a bit more systematically?

Your C drive space is just disappearing? As in your checking disk management and the actual partitioned space is reducing? Or your just viewing the space in file explorer and its less every time you look at it?

The size of the partition is remaining the same. In both Explorer and Disk management, the amount of free space is decreasing.

[the_fixer]

In Windows 7 we see .cab files from Windows update filling the drive from time to time.

May or may not apply but search on Windows 7 cab files filling up drive and see if it applies.



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Also a tool like windirstat can show you where space is being used

[Lan Mandragoran]

Can you lay it out a bit more systematically?

Your C drive space is just disappearing? As in your checking disk management and the actual partitioned space is reducing? Or your just viewing the space in file explorer and its less every time you look at it?

The size of the partition is remaining the same. In both Explorer and Disk management, the amount of free space is decreasing.

Winderstat is a great suggestion. There are other similiar programs that may be helpful as well.  I'd still suggest just rebuilding it.  It's really pretty easy, and isn't a bad thing to do in any case.

If something is actively filling up drive space you should be able to pinpoint the location and service via Task manager + procmon, that can lead to information overload if your not an expert in it. Also if you do decide to go that route, its probably easier to just rebuild it, rather than trying to sort through registry files and process threads.

[EricEng]

I second the suggestion for WinDirStat
https://windirstat.net/

Run that and you should see some large chunks being taken up.  The two biggest culprits are usually windows restore space and page file.  You don't need your page file to be larger than 2-4gb, but it will scale it based on the size of your drive, sometimes taking 10-15%. Otherwise you might have some program running in the background eating it up which windirstat will show.  I've seen multiple people forget they had dvr programs running that filled drives.

https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/sysdm_advancd_perform_change_vmpagefile.mspx?mfr=true
Follow those insturctions and change it to custom 2-4gb.

Edit:  Additional suggestion- Never make your C: partition that small. Windows slowly bloats with updates over the years.  Not uncommon to see it eat 60-80GB.  I never use a c drive under 250GB.  Space is so cheap these days.  You can pick up 1TB drives for like $20.

[zolotiyeruki]

The hibernation file is also a common culprit (hiberfil.sys).  If you disable hibernation, that file can be removed (if Windows doesn't do it automatically for you).  I'm staying away from Win10 as long as possible for several reasons, one of which is watching my coworkers lose several HOURS of productivity due to forced updates.

You can try Windows' Disk Cleanup program, and select the "Clean up System files" option.  That will reveal a bunch more stuff you can safely delete.

In any case, WinDirStat is a great option for figuring out what is occupying the bulk of your disk space.

[ObviouslyNotAGolfer]

Thanks for all your advice. Agreed! Windows 10 is crap!! Sometimes I feel as if I have a kid who needs constant supervision--gotta update NOW! How long will it take?  1% done tells me NOTHING. Goes from 1% to 78% in two seconds, stuck at 78% for hours. Every day I wonder whether I will be able to get work done or have to babysit this thing and for how long!

Last night I found the Windows.old file, full of 32 GB of the old OS--presumably Windows 8.1. I deleted it with Disk Cleanup, thus freeing a lot of room. However, I am still losing a little space every hour. I am trying to find the folder where this shite is being placed, but no luck yet. And REALLY--revert to Windows 8.1??? How would that go? Surely MS would bug the living shit out of me every second of the day to "upgrade" to Windows 10. And then, it would just force it on me (Again). WHat a joke.

I have a few programs I really love like Foobar 2000, Audacity, and Lightroom. If it were not for these I'd be on Linux mint like a cheap polyester suit on a Dallas divorce lawyer (<- joke from my friend who lives there)

[katsiki]

You've gotten some great advice.  You may also find "ccleaner" helpful.  It is freeware.

You can download it from: https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

It will get rid of a lot of junk and can be run on a regular basis.

[zolotiyeruki]

Audacity is available on Linux, and has been for a looong time.

[ObviouslyNotAGolfer]

Cool, thanks! Will check it out. Now I'm left with Foobar2000, which I absolutely love for FLAC encoding and playback. Adobe Lightroom is going subscription only, so sadly, I will likely leave that behind. Linux Mint is definitely on my radar.

[EricEng]

The hibernation file is also a common culprit (hiberfil.sys).  If you disable hibernation, that file can be removed (if Windows doesn't do it automatically for you).  I'm staying away from Win10 as long as possible for several reasons, one of which is watching my coworkers lose several HOURS of productivity due to forced updates.

Ah yes the hibernate file.  I knew I was forgetting a culprit.
Here is where you disable it:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/920730/how-to-disable-and-re-enable-hibernation-on-a-computer-that-is-running

As for Win10 I find I really like it.  I'm a pretty heavy user for both work and home with a lot of time spent on XP,Vista,7, and even 8.  10 is to 8 as 7 was to Vista.  10 fixed a lot of the issues while still creating some minor nuisances.  I find the system performance to be pretty handy.  My biggest gripe is how they just keep tacking on layer upon menu layer reach system configuration edits.  IE: Win10 option menu->win7 menu->win xp menu just to modify something like network settings or internet options.  Instead of bringing all the features forward they just give a worthless tiny subset and force you to dig deeper to get to the full menu.  Also hate the new search bar compared to Win7.

[YYK]

I encourage you to try out Linux. In my opinion, Linux is the real Mustachian operating system. For music playback, there are tons of options. I use Audacious (not to be confused to with Audacity). I formerly used Clementine, but I was annoyed that it always connects to lyric-search services whenever you start it up and I couldn't find a way to disable that. For encoding, ffmpeg is your friend. It can do pretty much everything. I have simple scripts for converting from FLAC to 320k, V0, and Vorbis that I can share if you want. I don't know if it can rip CDs, but there are any number of programs for that.

One of the nicest things about Linux is that you can get all of your software from the trusted repos for your distro, rather than having to rely on third party "free"ware for basic stuff like ssh like on Windows. I believe Mint is a .deb distro, so that gives you access to pretty much all of the packages out there. I run a .rpm system and I'm sometimes frustrated that the majority of problem fixes you can find on the internet are written with .deb packages in mind that may or may not have a .rpm equivalent.

[the_fixer]

Obviouslynotagolfer

I do not know you or your background and not trying to make assumptions but if you are not familiar with Linux and will need to rely on someone else to assist with issue you might be better off sticking with windows or even OS X as it will be easier to find assistance or self help tools.

I am a huge fan of Linux and have been working with it for a long time but for your everyday user it is not as easy to fix / maintain as windows.

On the plus side once you truly know it I would say it is easier to repair / maintain so if you have the skills / or want to use it as a learning opportunity that is great.


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[Lulee]

This may not apply to Windows 10 which I'm desperately trying to avoid as long as I can.  But I've had PCs where the free hard drive space was eaten up by *.tmp files from what appeared to be botched updates to Adobe Acrobat Reader --- out of a lab of nearly 20 PCs that I tried to keep identical in their updates, two stopped working when the hard drives were filled up to less than a GB of free space.  It took forever to purge these but after that and uninstalling & reinstalling Reader, everything was fine again.  One or more of your programs could be doing the same with either *.tmp or *.log files or something similar.

I did once see printer spool files building up in the Windows directory on a single PC.  It didn't get out of hand like the *.tmp files.  But it does further prove that programs can crapify your hard drive in unexpected ways.

It would be interesting to know how much of your hard drive gets eaten up each day beyond what you'd expect from the files you created that day.  If you only see surges every so often in unexpected free storage, it might help point you to which program is doing the file creation.  Then you can do some research and poking around to see exactly what the blazes is being created.

[Syonyk]

I'm staying away from Win10 as long as possible for several reasons, one of which is watching my coworkers lose several HOURS of productivity due to forced updates.

Pick your poison.  Lost productivity due to forced updates (that you can schedule to happen outside of business hours, and only pester you like that if you defer them endlessly), or your machine locked up tightly with one of the more recent variants of the crypto locker malware demanding bitcoin or you'll never see your files again, because some patch you deferred was a critical security update.

Running out of support OSes in 2017 is an epically bad idea.