[Closed] Please find my 20GB

Done windows 10? Do the system disc clean up as the old update files are not removed automatically

Hidden folders. There's one called AppData which is hidden.

Go [url= http://www.isunshare.com/windows-10/show-hidden-files-and-folders-in-windows-10.html ]here[/url] and follow these instructions and then you'll see an AppData folder in light colours - the lightly coloured ones are the hidden ones.

Thanks, but I should have said, its Windows 7.

Defrag is now a legacy function that has almost no use - modern OS's defrag as they go, and keep stuff in much more logical order than operating systems of the 90's and 2000's.

Anyway. There is a whole bunch of things that are too long to list where 20gb could hide.

Download CClearer by Piriform:

https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

You only need the free version.

Be warned, you can screw your system with CCLeaner if you don't know what you're doing - so don't gun ho erase everything - but the analyse function is harmless and will tell you whats up. You can easily clean less destructive areas and leave your registry alone if you're not comfortable with that.

Saying that, i've been using it years with no consequence.

Come back and tell us where your stuff was hidden when its done 🙂

Download and run [url= https://windirstat.net/ ]windirstat[/url] it'll show you what's taking up space visually. Other programs are probably available. Just be careful and if you're not confident about what something is then leave it alone.

I think I might of misunderstood what you're asking - on second pass you're just concerned that you're not seeing full drive volume on the folders you can see? As above, AppData will most likely be the culprit. Windows 7 has the same hidden folders as 10.

Thanks, but I should have said, its Windows 7.

Then google for the W7 instructions - same concept apples. There will definitely be a load of stuff in there - it may not be everything, but my bet is that it will be most of it.

Options
1) Temp Files - run disk cleanup etc
2) Mixing up MiB and MB
3) Someone's hiding some prawn

😀

Cheers - I am concerned that I can't see everything, but only as I'd like to delete anything that I can to create more space. I am guessing that AppData can't be erased in which case I am not too bothered that I can't find it!

Some of the files are hidden, things like App data are quite useful as it is all the settings etc.

Some of the things inside appdata can be cleaned - temp internet files for example. Any image you've downloaded (oi oi) for the past X days would be in there, for example.

CCleaner will cover these and free up space for you.

Run disc cleanup in admin mode, you might find a chunky amount of Old Windows files, from when standard Win10 users got the anniversary update around the end of July.

Files in AppData\Local\Temp can be deleted. Or if they can't it won't let you.

Run Disk Cleanup in non admin, then in admin.

Empty the recycle bin?

Do you use Sharepoint / Onedrive? With my work account I have the Sharepoint folder set on my second (bigger) drive but it actually creates a kind of temp folder on your c: drive which is often bigger than the original data folder.

It's the winsxs file that Rob's all the space on my HD, 35gig now and can't delete any of it apparently

Regular use of CCleaner should sort. My money's on a combi of recycle bin, temporary internet files & temp system files. Cleared 4gb off my mother's laptop at the weekend & she's not exactly a big user of teh interwebs.

iDevice backups? think they'd be in AppData

Defrag is now a legacy function that has almost no use - modern OS's defrag as they go,

Defrag is meaningless on an SSD regardless of any fragmentation. The whole point of Defrag is to move contiguous data together so that the the read head isn't leaping all over the place on a spinning platter seeking data. On an SSD there are no moving parts and any part of the storage can be accessed equally quickly. Indeed, Defrag can have a detrimental effect on SSDs as it produces excessive wear.

My desktop PC has a 112gb ssd, and a TB disc too.

The SSD is nearly full, but there seems to be a discrepancy of 20gb when I look into it:

Right. For a start, regular mechanical hard disks are always smaller than advertised. Hard disk Gb sizes are advertised in powers of 10 rather than powers of 2 for marketing purposes, so (simplifying for ease of numbers) 1Kb of RAM is 1024 bytes (2^10) whereas 1Kb of disk is only 1000 bytes (10^3). This small difference adds up when you're into Gigabit / Terabit territory.

You say your drive has 112Gb. I'm guessing this is it's reported size in Explorer, as that would correspond to a 120Gb drive as marketed which is a common size of SSD. The interesting thing here is that it's likely the SSD [i]will actually be 120Gb[/i] (in fact, it's probably 128Gb in actuality). The missing 8Gb (16Gb) here is used for something called overprovisioning, and the loss of space is hidden because people now are conditioned to expect drives to be ~7% smaller than advertised. This is inherent in all (I think) SSDs.

Overprovisioning means that an area of the drive is reserved and unavailable to the user. It's there so that as the drive wears out it can replace any bad bits with the reserved memory locations (amongst other things).

What does this have to do with your loss? Well, that amount of reserved space isn't that much, so manufacturers may factory-set additional space to allocate to overprovisioning, and in addition to this there's an amount which is user-configurable. If you've got a manufacturer's SSD utility you can check this (the one for my Samsung Evo drive is called Samsumg Magician). It's possible that this is where your missing space is, it's simply been allocated as additional overprovisioning space for the drive's own maintenance needs.

--

Moving on from that, stuff others have said holds true.

There may be hidden files (a page file and a hibernation file could easily account for a good chunk of that on their own).

The Windows Properties size is at best an estimate, and at worst lies and is not to be trusted.

Adding up folders and files is always going to give you rounding errors.

An amount of space is lost to file system vagueries.

And so on and so forth. The TL;DR to this is you can drive yourself mad trying to balance drive space calculations. What to do? I think that's another post...

Cougar beat me to it but I was going to suggest Over Provisioning; I have it turned on on my SSD at a cost of 23.2Gb.

Did the SSD come as part of a pre-built system? If so there might be a hidden 'Recovery' partition set up by the manufacturer (it's sometimes done to avoid the need to supply Windows DVDs).

^^ I'm so glad someone beat me to it! 😉

EDIT: 2 people beat me to it 😆

After all that, I've just re-read your OP properly and half of what I've just said is irrelevant. Arse. Molgrips was on the money in the third post.

It's the winsxs file that Rob's all the space on my HD, 35gig now and can't delete any of it apparently

Do not touch WinSxS unless you know what you're doing, or you're going to have a really bad day.

Be warned, you can screw your system with CCLeaner if you don't know what you're doing - so don't gun ho erase everything

I always recommend [url= http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/files/file/187-tfc-temp-file-cleaner-by-oldtimer/ ]TFC[/url] over CCleaner these days. It does the same job and is a one-button task.

Disk cleanup is good advice, and in Admin mode will give you the opportunity to remove old system files (someone said to run it in user mode first, can't see the point of that myself). Easiest way is to hit Start, type "disk cleanup" and when the app shortcut pops up you can right-click to run as Admin.

Once you've done that, grab [url= https://www.jam-software.de/customers/downloadTrial.php?article_no=80 ]Treesize Free[/url] (download the .zip and extract the .exe file, you don't need anything else). Run it as admin and it'll show you your folder structure arranged by size. You'll be able to drill into your \users\tim folder and see exactly what is and isn't in there.

Pretty sure there's graphical utilities to show you which folders contain the largest total file volume. (cougar just raised this)

Isn't over-provisioning transparent to Explorer?

On my pc running disc cleanup as admin removes different files to as a user.

On my pc running disc cleanup as admin removes different files to as a user.

It removes [i]extra [/i]files, not different ones. If you ran it as admin and then as user, and the user pass found anything to delete (bar things that have appeared since the first pass) I would be very surprised indeed.

(Damn it, you've got me doubting myself now...! I'll have to check to be sure.)

Brilliant, thanks.

All those who said Appdata give yourselves a pat on the back - 14GB hiding in there as a hidden folder. Top marks to Molgrips.

I'll try that TFC thing and see if it finds some more space from somewhere.

The other thing you can do of course is go through Programs in Control Panel and uninstall anything you're not using (or uninstall and reinstall to the D:\ for things that are large and not particularly performance-dependent).

TFC has found 10GB so that's brilliant - thanks a lot. Interestingly non of it was from appdata, that is still sitting at 14GB.

Anyway, an extra 10GB will do me for now.

If you have sufficient amounts for of ram them disable page file or move to the HDD. Also doable hibernation if you don't often allow your pc to sleep.

If you drill into appdata with Treesize, you might find a chunk of that is application-specific temp files or log files which can be binned.

(Damn it, you've got me doubting myself now...! I'll have to check to be sure.)

Running it in user mode after admin gave me 117Kb of Temp Internet Files and 120Kb of Temp files. So you may be right, but it's negligible if so.

Re AppData - you asked for help finding the extra space - not what to do about it 🙂

There'll be a lot of crap in there you can delete, but some stuff you can't. Only delete stuff you know you don't need - generally anything in 'temp' can go (a lot of programs don't clean up after themselves) or something that obviously belongs to something you've uninstalled. Beyond that, don't mess with it too much. Lots of it will be required by your software.

After all that, I've just re-read your OP properly and half of what I've just said is irrelevant. Arse. Molgrips was on the money in the third post.

I was going to post somtehing to that effect but you beat me to it 🙂

TreeSize is a good shout btw - big annoyance that Windows doesn't include something similar in this day and age.

Re WinXS - isn't it a sort of 'virtual' directory full of (hard) links to files elsewhere on the disk? The links being hard links rather than soft means they are effectively dummy files linked at the disk level so Windows can't tell them from real ones. In other words, a file in WinXS is a directory entry that points to the same set of bytes as another file on the disk. Which is why you can't delete them.