Question Windows 10 taking up 62.6 gigs of storage, HELP

[preslove]

I have windows 10 on a 128 gig ssd and only have 1.2 gigs left because the windows install is taking up 62 gigs of space. I've done storage sense and all of the things google tells me to, but this piece of crap keeps on just expanding. Any ideas?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but ... 128GB, take away 62GB, leaves... more than 1.2GB.

So, are you saying, your Windows directory is that large, but yet, still MORE space is taken up, and you only have 1.2GB free?

Get CCleaner, clean out temp files, both user and system.

Open Explorer.exe, right-click on C-colon, select Properties, click Disk Cleanup button, when that appears, click "System Disk Cleanup", and see if perhaps, you have an "old Windows" to clean up (Windows.old on your C-colon drive), and look at the other options for cleanup. There's an option for cleaning up "Windows Update Files", I DO NOT recommend checking that one off to clean up, because it can take... hours! The other stuff should clean up in under a few minutes on an SSD.

Also, check out "VSS Shadow Copies" / "VSS Shadow Copy Service", and VSSadmin.exe. Look it up on the web, I'm not super-familiar, but "shadow copies" can take up space on the disk, without appearing in the filesystem.

Consider using TreeSize, or WinDirSize, to check directory and free space size.

Also, read on the web how to delete / reset "Windows Indexing Service", if / when it gets "out of control" and starts "eating space", as it can do.

But honestly, a 128GB SSD these days is kind of too tight now. I put a 256GB-class SSD in all of my budget builds, except for extreme cases of browser-only boxes, then I might use one of my old 128GB-class SSDs.

(I remember my first SSDs, for both myself and my friend, 30GB OCZ SSDs, for Win7 64-bit. Left like 5GB free, at best. Had to manual trim down the PAGEFILE.SYS and remove the HIBERFIL.SYS to get everything to fit. Then Windows Updates came along, and bang! Need a bigger SSD.)

If you're going to buy one, just get one of the 1TB ones for $80 @ Newegg, honestly. Heck, you can even get 1TB M.2 NVMe SSDs, the Intel 660p, for around that price too, on sale. (Running a pair of those now in RAID-0 on this rig.)

 

[VirtualLarry]

Team Group GX1 960GB 83.00

So, I've not found much technical info on these drives but they seem to have good user reviews and they are cheap. Are these DRAM-less? I need a new drive to move to Win 10 and I don't want to lose my Win 7 install, at least not for a while...

forums.anandtech.com

I've used these before, they perform fairly well, Silicon Power A55 "Ace" SATA 2.5" SSD, 512GB for $49.99.

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

 

[PingSpike]

Can you tell us how large your windows winsxs folder is? That's the hog that is always killing me.

I had to live on a Windows 7 machine with a 120GB drive that had winsxs cancer. I never solved the problem, I was due for a new PC so I just limped it along. It was hosed though, Windows update didn't even have enough space to run.

I actually thought Windows10 "solved" this problem by basically doing in place installs with the feature updates that started things over. Which is just papering over the problem really.

 

[preslove]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but ... 128GB, take away 62GB, leaves... more than 1.2GB.

So, are you saying, your Windows directory is that large, but yet, still MORE space is taken up, and you only have 1.2GB free?

Get CCleaner, clean out temp files, both user and system.

Open Explorer.exe, right-click on C-colon, select Properties, click Disk Cleanup button, when that appears, click "System Disk Cleanup", and see if perhaps, you have an "old Windows" to clean up (Windows.old on your C-colon drive), and look at the other options for cleanup. There's an option for cleaning up "Windows Update Files", I DO NOT recommend checking that one off to clean up, because it can take... hours! The other stuff should clean up in under a few minutes on an SSD.

Also, check out "VSS Shadow Copies" / "VSS Shadow Copy Service", and VSSadmin.exe. Look it up on the web, I'm not super-familiar, but "shadow copies" can take up space on the disk, without appearing in the filesystem.

Consider using TreeSize, or WinDirSize, to check directory and free space size.

Also, read on the web how to delete / reset "Windows Indexing Service", if / when it gets "out of control" and starts "eating space", as it can do.

But honestly, a 128GB SSD these days is kind of too tight now. I put a 256GB-class SSD in all of my budget builds, except for extreme cases of browser-only boxes, then I might use one of my old 128GB-class SSDs.

(I remember my first SSDs, for both myself and my friend, 30GB OCZ SSDs, for Win7 64-bit. Left like 5GB free, at best. Had to manual trim down the PAGEFILE.SYS and remove the HIBERFIL.SYS to get everything to fit. Then Windows Updates came along, and bang! Need a bigger SSD.)

If you're going to buy one, just get one of the 1TB ones for $80 @ Newegg, honestly. Heck, you can even get 1TB M.2 NVMe SSDs, the Intel 660p, for around that price too, on sale. (Running a pair of those now in RAID-0 on this rig.)

Yeah, I have about 30 gigs of apps and data (seems kind of large for a boot drive, but yeah)

Thanks for the advice

And, yeah, after posting the thread I started looking at ssd prices and am thinking of doing a fresh install on a new 1 tb drive.

I'm thinking it may be because I got a free upgrade copy through work and did the 'install twice' thing. I can get a full version of windows 10 for free through school, so I may do that on a new, big drive. I've been meaning to clean up my storage on this rig (it's a mess of old hard drives with weird partition structures, on top of the boot ssd lol)

Can you tell us how large your windows winsxs folder is? That's the hog that is always killing me.

I had to live on a Windows 7 machine with a 120GB drive that had winsxs cancer. I never solved the problem, I was due for a new PC so I just limped it along. It was hosed though, Windows update didn't even have enough space to run.

I actually thought Windows10 "solved" this problem by basically doing in place installs with the feature updates that started things over. Which is just papering over the problem really.

I'll take a look when I get home, thanks.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you DON'T want to do a fresh re-install, and just want to MIGRATE to a bigger OS SSD (and honestly, I do recommend a fresh install, it sounds like your install has "baggage" that could be cleared out by a fresh install), then download and install Macrium Reflect (Free edition), and get an external portable HDD bigger than your OS SSD's current usage capacity, and make an IMAGE BACKUP of your OS SSD, and make the USB bootable Macrium Recovery Environment stick (WinPE 10-based), and then remove the old SSD, unplug all other drives, plug in the NEW SSD, and boot off of the Macrium Recovery USB, and then plug in the portable external HDD with the OS image, and RESTORE to the NEW SSD. When that's done, shut down, unplug the USB key and the portable external HDD, and you should be able to BOOT the OLD OS on the NEW SSD.

Edit: And if this is the same hardware, and you already have a Windows key activated on that hardware, then you don't need to acquire a new Windows key, just to do a fresh installation.

If Win7 - run a key finder program before decommissioning the old system, and write it down, or better yet, print it out directly.
If Win10 - don't need to do anything, just attach new SSD, and re-install using Media Creation Tool from MS (download Win10 installer from MS, using a USB stick, before you decommission the old rig), using the same "Edition" (Pro or Home) as was previously installed, and if on same hardware, should auto-activate for you. (Could take a couple of days, but usually happens nearly immediately.)

 

[preslove]

Yeah, I'm thinking a fresh install bc the current install obvs has something wrong with it, inflating the windows file size ridiculously.

Here's the thing. I work at a university and got the current install from a Windows 10 'upgrade' that I bought for $10 or so (I did the 'install once, and then upgrade to use the. I'm currently taking classes, so I get another *full* copy of windows 10 for free. Can I install the full install (I'm thinking the install and then upgrade approach might be a problem) and use my old key, and save the new key for later use?

As for data transfer, I actually have a usb3 2.5 and 3.5 drive dock that I bought for a "collect all my old drives from old systems and get my pictures off of them" project that I haven't gotten around to doing. I figure that this whole thing will be a good way of starting on this

Thanks

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, I'm thinking a fresh install bc the current install obvs has something wrong with it, inflating the windows file size ridiculously.

Here's the thing. I work at a university and got the current install from a Windows 10 'upgrade' that I bought for $10 or so (I did the 'install once, and then upgrade to use the. I'm currently taking classes, so I get another *full* copy of windows 10 for free. Can I install the full install (I'm thinking the install and then upgrade approach might be a problem) and use my old key, and save the new key for later use?

I'm saying, if Windows 10 was "Activated" on that hardware (same mobo, basically), then all you need to do is go to microsoft.com/windows10/download or something like that, and use the "Media Creation Tool", to make a bootable USB Win10 installer, and then use that to install Win10, and tell it that you don't have a key, and pick the edition that was previously installed, and it should activate Automatically. No need for keys entered, if Win10 was previously installed.

Edit: The only thing that I don't know, is if you had the "Educational" edition of Win10, if that is included in the MCT public version. There's a "Tech Bench" version too, you might have to track down and use that one to get a copy of the "Educational" edition installer.

 

[preslove]

I'm saying, if Windows 10 was "Activated" on that hardware (same mobo, basically), then all you need to do is go to microsoft.com/windows10/download or something like that, and use the "Media Creation Tool", to make a bootable USB Win10 installer, and then use that to install Win10, and tell it that you don't have a key, and pick the edition that was previously installed, and it should activate Automatically. No need for keys entered, if Win10 was previously installed.

Edit: The only thing that I don't know, is if you had the "Educational" edition of Win10, if that is included in the MCT public version. There's a "Tech Bench" version too, you might have to track down and use that one to get a copy of the "Educational" edition installer.

Ok, thanks, I'll try it out

 

[bbhaag]

Before you go through the process of installing Windows again try running this command in an elevated command prompt.
To open an elevated command prompt right click on the start button and then left click on Windows Powershell(Admin). Copy and paste the command into the command line then press enter and let it proceed. Once it has finished type exit and then restart the computer.

Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase

Also if you have not already tried it run the Disk Cleanup utility from within Windows. To run the program right click on your C: drive and then click Disk Clean Up. Once it runs then click Clean Up System Files and select any large files like Previous Installations.
Let the Clean Up utility run and once it has finished restart your computer.

 

[JackMDS]

This free App might clue you in to where the "cancer" is.

Find Space Hogs with TreeSize Free | JAM Software

TreeSize Free is a free disk space manager for Windows. The software shows you the sizes of folders including all subfolders.

www.jam-software.com