Total File Size Doesn't Add Up To HD Used Space

[SpicyTime]

I'm trying to clean up my main C: on Windows 7. It is an unpartitioned 80G SSD, with 74GB of actual space to use. Windows reports that I'm currently using 46.8GB from Local Disk Properties. Normally, I'd use Windows Explorer to find which folders are eating up the most space to clean those out, except it reports all my files on C: using only 28.6GB. Where's the missing 18GB?

I've already done the following:

• Hidden files and folders turned on in Windows Explorer.
• System Restore Points cleaned up. Size of system restore is set to 2.77GB anyway, not 18GB.

Does anyone know what's going on?

 

[ctk1981]

Hibernation file would be my guess

Open up a command prompt, be sure to use open as administrator.

Type this in:

powercfg –h off

 

[SpicyTime]

Thanks for the advice! Doing that cleared up 2GB, which is some progress. 16GB left to account for.

 

[ctk1981]

Try downloading this program and see if there are any unusual file sizes that appear.

https://windirstat.info/

The other thing that can be taking up space is Pagefile. Right Click My Computer, Properties, Advanced......virtual memory, see how large it is.

 

[Deders]

Might be worth doing a disk heck to see if any files have been orphaned

 

[BonzaiDuck]

He didn't say how much RAM is installed on his mobo. I can only say that 16GB falls in the ballpark for RAM-driven, system-managed swapfiles, somewhat in excess of 8GB and the stock or standard maximum of 16.

At that point, I still suspect it's the swapfile/virtual-memory. You could add again another 8GB -- possibly more -- for accumulated Volume Shadow Copies. Often when I've checked my own flagship-sig-rig or fiddled with the settings to repair or reset VSC's and schedule them, I've found over 10GB-worth of the latter. On my server, the VSCs total more something like 8GB.

 

[SpicyTime]

Thanks for all the replies! The virtual memory paging file was the culprit. I have 12GB of RAM, and Windows automatically set my paging file to 12GB. I I google'd around and there isn't a clear opinion that reducing this will be that harmful to my system. My task manager only reported my system using 200MB of paged kernel memory, so it should be okay for me to reduce it. Will try 4GB for awhile.

Issue is resolved, once again thanks everyone!

 

[ctk1981]

Depending on what you use your computer for, at 12GB it would be possible to completely eliminate page file. My last three systems have had 16GB of ram so I haven't used pagefile for quite some time...no issues 3+ years.

 

[Cerb]

In your 2nd image, you are missing files. Check to show system files as ell s hidden, and then the result will likely be close (they never match up perfectly).