what's taking the space?

[Fayd]

why is there a discrepancy between those numbers? I should have ~ 18 gigs available, i have ~2. I went down to almost 0 free space, so i used disk cleanup and deleted over 3.5 gigs of temporary files, and the hard drive space that was cleaned up IMMEDIATELY gets taken up by something.

i don't understand this. i have volume shadow copy turned off, any backups and all downloads go to a different disk, what the hell is taking my space?

 

[Fardringle]

Hidden/System files don't show up in the properties list on the right since that is just the total size of the files that you can see and therefore can select. The disk properties window on the left shows the full amount because the system can see and include those hidden/system files in its totals.

edit: If you want to see what exactly is using the space on the drive, run the free version of TreeSize to analyze the drive.

 

[Burpo]

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tr-dojo/delete-hiberfilsys-by-disabling-windows-hibernate-function/

 

[lakedude]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinDirStat

 

[pcgeek11]

Did you empty the waste basket?

You don't get the space back until the trash is emptied.

 

[Fayd]

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tr-dojo/delete-hiberfilsys-by-disabling-windows-hibernate-function/

That was it.

powercfg.exe -h off

worked.

Thank you.

 

[JeffMD]

18gb hybernation file? really?

Anyways, windows contains backups of all its library files too, can't do anything about it.

 

[Ketchup]

Also, if you have enough free space now, upgrading to Windows 10 would help. Starting in Windows 8 Microsoft got a better handle on the there-but-not-really winsxs folder, making the OS appear much lighter. For example, the Windows folder for the Windows 7 I am on right now reports it is using 25.1 GB (of which 11.8 being the winsxs folder). In Windows 10, my Windows folder is only 11.5 GB (of which the winsxs folder is only reporting 5.73 GB).

 

[PliotronX]

18gb hybernation file? really?

Anyways, windows contains backups of all its library files too, can't do anything about it.

The hibernation file is the same size as the capacity of RAM. In this case, the OP probably has 16GB of RAM. The powercfg command is one of the first things I run on fresh installs. It ought to be disabled by default for SSDs.

 

[OutHouse]

winsxs folder

God I hate that design, that bullshit fucked me over on a few production servers causing me to do a totally unnecessary rebuilds.

 

[Ketchup]

God I hate that design, that bullshit fucked me over on a few production servers causing me to do a totally unnecessary rebuilds.

My guess is that when these were first implemented (Windows Vista), MS assumed they would have graduated from NTFS. Fortunately by Windows 8 they realized that this wasn't going to happen, and have significantly shrunk the amount of non-existent space.