Sometimes the free space on my 250GB NVMe is 176GB and sometimes it's 156GB and I have not installed or downloaded anything to that drive when it changed from 176GB to 156GB of free space. The total size of the drive still shows the correct capacity under the Properties when this issue crops. I did a chkdsk to the drive and no errors were founds. I'm using Windows 10 Pro. The drive is a Samsung 970 EVO Plus. Any ideas of why I'm randomly losing 20GB of free space on the drive in between power ups and reboots? If it were failing NAND chips, wouldn't it also affect the total capacity of the drive by 20GB and not just the available free space on the drive when this issue occurs? There's 98% life left on the drive according to HWInfo64 and I did a block scan using Partition Wizard last week and it showed no bad blocks.
Question 20GB of SSD space mysteriously being used up sometimes
- Thread starter Dave3000
- Start date
solidsnake1298
Senior member
- Aug 7, 2009
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I don't think its the hibernation file. I started at 180GB free space today and it went to do 161GB free space then went back to 180GB free space then I disabled the hibernation file and it went to 193GB free space. Still it does not explain the loss of free space from 180GB to 161GB. I did a disk cleanup yesterday and I freed up only 8GB. My page file was at 4.8GB. Could this issue be damage to the NAND chips or the IO chip on the NVME drive due to overheating since I wasn't using my heatsink on that NVMe SSD last week for about a week as I didn't have a thermal pad as I destroyed the old thermal pad.
VirtualLarry
No Lifer
- Aug 25, 2001
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mikeymikec
Lifer
- May 19, 2011
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Run a program like WinDirStat with admin privs in the 'low' and 'high' scenarios and see what's causing the increase. The only issue I've had with this approach is that data in 'System Volume Information' doesn't show up this way. You could that under system properties > configure system protection.
You would have bigger problems if NAND chips were failing. Use CrystalDiskInfo to see the health of the SSD.
solidsnake1298
Senior member
- Aug 7, 2009
- 302
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This would definitely make sense if you are running very memory intensive applications that don't fit into RAM.
Run a program like WinDirStat with admin privs in the 'low' and 'high' scenarios and see what's causing the increase. The only issue I've had with this approach is that data in 'System Volume Information' doesn't show up this way. You could that under system properties > configure system protection.
I did all that and WinDirStat shows about the same space used up in the 180GB and 160GB free space scenario. The space used up doesn't add up to the available free space when that 20GB of free space is mysteriously missing. I even did a Windows 10 reinstall and formatted my SSD before doing so and still the issue sometimes shows up. Currently in My PC under Properties for C: it's showing 160GB of free space and WinDirStat shows 46.3GB used up on C and shows that the hibernation file is 12.8GB and the page file is 5GB, which is part of that 46.3GB used up, which is what it also shows when the free space is 180GB on my SSD. Also I did disable System Protection and deleted the restore point and that only freed up 5GB, so Restore Points can't be what is causing the 20GB of free space to mysteriously disappear on a random basis.
I also rebooted my system 3 times in a row and it showed the 20GB of free space still missing on that SSD for C: partition each time. Then I did a shutdown and power back up and it shows the 20GB of free space returned to the SSD. WinDirStat still shows the same amount of free space used up on the SSD when the 20GB of free space returned.
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This might help: https://www.diskboss.com/disk_change_monitor.html
It should help to figure out which file extension is seeing the most change in size and then you can investigate that file type further.
It should help to figure out which file extension is seeing the most change in size and then you can investigate that file type further.
Last week I shorted out my motherboard three times (on different days), resulting in a dirty shutdown each time, by trying to plug my USB-C cable to the rear USB-C port of my PC and the connector made contact with a spot in the USB-C port that it should not have because I did not have a good view of the USB-C port due to my PC being close to the wall. I wonder if shorting out of my motherboard could have caused damage to that SSD that is showing the random 20GB free space loss issue? Also in an unrelated note, yesterday while I was using RetroBat (in the menu) in Windows 10, I got a BSOD with a countdown timer mentioning something about a watchdog and that my "PC has encountered a problem and will shutdown". Could this be a damaged motherboard due to the shorting out of trying to plug in my USB-C cable inaccurately (making contact with something it should not have in the process) into the USB-C port of my motherboard? So I might have a damaged motherboard and SSD due to this shorting out?
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One difference in behavior that could be attributed to restart v. shutdown is Fast Startup. Try disabling it (if enabled):
Oyeve
Lifer
- Oct 18, 1999
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Do you use ms apps from the windows store? I used to and all sorts of space was mysteriously missing. Turns out all those apps take up space that you can't just delete but have to unistall from the ms app store. Don't know if that is the case still but it sucked at the time.
I think that was it. Ever since I disabled fast startup in the power management setting menu in Windows 10, the issue has not occurred since. I keep fast startup in Windows disabled for now on.
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