Question Space fluctuation on OS SSD?

[Stg-Flame]

I know I've had a similar issue in the past but as of the last few days, the storage on my SSD where my OS is installed has fluctuated significantly over the last few days. I noticed my space was decreasing slowly (about 500MB/day) a few days ago and today when I looked at it, I somehow gained 8GB of free space. I did delete two old programs I no longer use (Sandboxie and NexusModManager) but after deleting those two programs (and all files within after uninstallation) only gave me around 700MB.

Is there any explanation as to why a drive will randomly gain and lose space without any external interfering on my part? I'm the only one who uses this PC and I recently scanned my entire PC top to bottom with Spybot, Malwarebytes, and Avast and came up with nothing (aside from the usual few trackers that Spybot finds). It's been a very long time since I reformatted but I'm not sure why that would cause these fluctuations.

 

[gipper53]

I know I've had a similar issue in the past but as of the last few days, the storage on my SSD where my OS is installed has fluctuated significantly over the last few days. I noticed my space was decreasing slowly (about 500MB/day) a few days ago and today when I looked at it, I somehow gained 8GB of free space. I did delete two old programs I no longer use (Sandboxie and NexusModManager) but after deleting those two programs (and all files within after uninstallation) only gave me around 700MB.

Is there any explanation as to why a drive will randomly gain and lose space without any external interfering on my part? I'm the only one who uses this PC and I recently scanned my entire PC top to bottom with Spybot, Malwarebytes, and Avast and came up with nothing (aside from the usual few trackers that Spybot finds). It's been a very long time since I reformatted but I'm not sure why that would cause these fluctuations.

Do you use MS OneDrive? I've found it tends to make daily backups (sometimes multiple times per day) that can quickly eat up space. Each backup folder can be 100s of MB depending on what you have. Check this folder under your username:

 

[VirtualLarry]

Do you stream videos often? Depending on the player/app/plugin, those can leave temp files around. (Especially Flash Player.)

 

[corkyg]

If the Page file is on that drive, it also does that.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Update: I'm down another 3GB from yesterday to today.

Do you use MS OneDrive?

I don't think I use MS OneDrive but I'll double-check.

Do you stream videos often? Depending on the player/app/plugin, those can leave temp files around. (Especially Flash Player.)

I don't stream at all unless you mean stream from a website, then I occasionally watch some speedrun videos on Youtube. I also keep my temporary files cleaned up about once every two or three weeks.

If the Page file is on that drive, it also does that.

The page file is on this drive, but I didn't know it could fluctuate so rapidly like this. Is this an indication of something bad or is this normal and I've never really noticed it until recently?

 

[Stg-Flame]

Update: I just went from 9GB of free space to 36.9GB of free space. Is there a program I can use to see what is fluctuating on my SSD? I checked into the page file and I can't see anything wrong with it (growing or decreasing in size).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Do you have some program or utility, making VSS snapshots of your filesystem, possibly daily? Do you have a backup program, set to auto-backup daily? I'm wonder if VSS snapshots are the reason that you're seeing the space disparity.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Not sure what VSS snapshots are, so I doubt that. I also disabled system restore and don't use any backup programs. I backup my own data manually every few months for non-important stuff and as-needed for important stuff.

 

[ArisVer]

A good utility for checking your disk space is WinDirStat.
If is not too difficult you should also consider reinstalling the OS. There must be a program (or Windows) that fools around.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Well I took a screenshot of what it brought up on WinDirStat and the next time I notice my HDD increase or decrease in size, I'll check it again and be able to immediately pinpoint the issue. If only there were a way to export this report so I didn't have to take a really zoomed-out screenshot of everything opened, that would be incredibly useful.