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My C drive (SSD, the drive on which I installed the OS) recently shows that it's almost full.

(Japanese text says: empty space is 6.98 GB out of 105 GB.) enter image description here

But when I checked by computing all the folders' size (including hidden folders), the result is as below. (Japanese text says: size: 54.9 GB; size on disk: 45.2 GB) enter image description here

I tried system file cleanup and emptying the Recycle Bin, but nothing changed.

Would you guys give me some suggestions please?

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  • 1
    Download and install this program (SequoiaView): win.tue.nl/sequoiaview It shows you a very nice and useful graphical map of your partitions.
    – alx - recommends codidact
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 12:09
  • 18
    As I can see in the screenshot in the background is that you select all files in C:\. But what you do not select is system files. In the folder options, where you selected "show hidden files" is the option to "show protected operating system files". You are missing hibernation file, page file and swap filein your calculation.
    – sbecker
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 12:26
  • @CacahueteFrito What's the difference to WinDirStat?
    – glglgl
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 12:32
  • @glglgl Didn't know about it. It seems SequoiaView is older that WinDirStat, but they are very similar. WinDirStat seems to have more functionality, though.
    – alx - recommends codidact
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 12:38
  • If you're running the latest Release Preview build of Windows 10, check out Reserved Storage: groovypost.com/howto/…
    – niemiro
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 17:48

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
58

There are several things you could try:

  • Get an overview about your disk space

If you want general information about what is using disk space on your computer, you can use tools like WinDirStat which can be found at https://windirstat.net/. (There is a portable version available at https://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/windirstat_portable). Select the drive(s) you want to have information about and start the analysis. The result is pretty much self-explanatory. You get an overview of directories and files sorted by size. Additionally, you get a visual representation of the used disk space.

WinDirStat

  • Use Storage Sense

You find that under Settings > System > Storage, or just type Storage after you opened your Win 10 Start Menu

Free Space - Settings

Storage Sense is the successor of the good old Cleanmanager application which has been deprecated by Microsoft (source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Storage-at-Microsoft/Windows-10-and-Storage-Sense/ba-p/428270)

cleanmgr.exe
  • Clean up the Windows Component Store

Open a Powershell session (as Admin) and analyze your component store by running

dism /online /Cleanup-image /AnalyzeComponentStore

This can take several minutes to complete. If it gives you the advise to cleanup the component store, run

dism /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup

You get more information by running

dism /online /Cleanup-Image /?
  • Check for the existence of volume shadow copies

List information about the shadow storage

vssadmin list shadowstorage

or get information about the shadow files

vssadmin list shadows

Delete the oldest one on your C drive by running 

vssadmin delete shadows /for=c: /oldest

Alternatively, you could delete them all

vssadmin delete shadows /all
  • Disable and re-enable hibernation The Hiberfil.sys hidden system file is located in the root folder of the drive where the operating system is installed. It is approximately as big as the amount of random access memory (RAM) installed on the computer, as it stores a copy of the system memory on your hard disk when the hybrid sleep setting is turned on.

Disable hibernation

powercfg /h off

Enable hibernation

powercfg /h on

Hope that helps

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  • thanks for the answer, I run the command you gave and it did not recommend me to clean up the components...
    – EagerToLearn
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 8:07
  • I have just edited my answer, maybe that could be helpful for you. Good luck ;-)
    – gammarayburst
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 8:13
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    Also add cleanmgr.exe and show some hint how to use WinDirStat, it may help OP :)
    – Biswapriyo
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 9:01
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    For laptops, hiberfil.sys is often the culprit because it needs to be as big a the amount of RAM and can only live on the C drive (can't move it to a larger data drive).
    – psubsee2003
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 11:54
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    If you do use WinDirStat, be aware that Running As Administrator gives you visual into C:\Windows and other places where you shouldn't delete manually. System Restore Points, the 7 GB used by Windows Update permanently, Windows.old folders, etc.
    – MountainMan
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 15:42
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You can use an application called WinDirStat. It shows you graphically how space is organized on the disk, through colored blocks that vary in size - the heavier the file, the bigger the block.

Here is a screenshot of this application:

Screenshot of WinDirStat after the analysis of the disk

I highly recommend it.

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  • Seems to be a nice app but the colored blocks seems weird to me xD, will try it out though
    – CaldeiraG
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 13:03
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    @CaldeiraG They are colored based on type of file, so you can see which are video, audio, application, system, etc.
    – GalacticCowboy
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 13:22
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    @StianYttervik It does look crappy, but at least the contrast is high -- which has more value in this scenario, I'd say.
    – orithena
    Commented May 7, 2019 at 11:30
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If this is a fresh Windows install you likely have a massive page file and a huge amount of allocated virtual memory.
Go to

Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Performance Settings -> Advanced -> Change Virtual Memory

and set it to Equal OR Greater amount max than your current amount of RAM. Or to <1GB if you have an SSD and know what you are doing, and have >16GB of RAM.

Having hibernate enabled also potentially uses a large amount of disk space. Disable hibernate using PowerCfg in CMD. The command is available with a quick web search.

For me, it saved almost 60GB of disk space on a fresh windows install that had 32GB of RAM.

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  • With 16 GB of RAM I usually completely turn off the virtual memory. Running MS Outlook, several instances of VS, a business chat application (260 MB commit size), SourceTree, all distributed over several virtual desktops, one for each task. The memory hog is Firefox; it cumulatively hogs memory until it runs out (which is at about 8 GB or so, because all other apps need only 8 as well). So I "reboot" Firefox every other day or so. But then we run Jenkins, UpSource and a Rational Jazz Team Server through web interfaces... so the experience is quite good. No swapping whatsoever :-).
    – Peter - Reinstate Monica
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 15:13
  • I have 16gb at work but leave swap on. Its surprising how often 8 browsers full of tabs start taking those precious resources (along with 3 phpstorms, a couple of vms and a number of remote desktop sessions, outlook etc). The easiest answer to the op is get a bigger main drive as we don't know how much RAM he's running. They're cheap enough now. Almost certainly system files + swapfile + hiberfile if hibernate is on.
    – Adsy2010
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 21:27
  • @PeterA.Schneider As always, the Windows commit guarantee (i.e. a program that has committed memory will never be refused access to this memory, in other words, OOM happens on commit not on access) requires that all committed memory be backed by virtual memory even if never used. More practically, this means you end up locking away physical RAM that can never be used if you don't have a page file to back the extra commit. It's common for browsers to commit some 20-40% more than they usually use. Lesson: disabling the page file, even if you think you have plenty of RAM, is generally a bad idea.
    – Bob
    Commented May 7, 2019 at 2:03
  • Isn't the default settings these days that Windows allocate as needed?
    – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
    Commented May 7, 2019 at 5:28
  • @Bob As I said, my experience is rather positive, even with this rather demanding setup (with the possible exception of Firefox). Did I mention that I hardly ever reboot my machine? Swapping is unnecessary with 16 GB; doing without it makes the machine more responsive, even with an SSD. I just wanted to share that. I'm especially unsure what good having a swap file <1GB would do (as user10.. suggests) compared to none at all.
    – Peter - Reinstate Monica
    Commented May 7, 2019 at 5:43
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You may want to consider searching for your largest files just in case one of your programs is behaving badly. I recently had an issue on my work computer where Avast and Outlook were at odds, and avast would make an infinitely increasing .tmp file until there was literally no space left on my drive.

In file explorer try searching for size:gigantic this might give you a better idea of what is causing the issue if it's not just you've got a ton of programs installed.

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1

This has happened to me before. I downloaded SpaceSniffer, looked through the drive and subfolders manually, did all sorts of things to no avail.

For me, the solution was very simple, but easily overlooked

My page file was set to be way too large.

Quoted from this link

To change the virtual memory settings, go to Start, Control Panel and click on System. Click on the Advanced tab and under the Performance box, click Settings. In Windows 7, you’ll need to click on Advanced System Settings on the left side to bring up the System Properties dialog.

On the Performance dialog, click the Advanced tab and then click Change under the Virtual Memory heading.

From there you can see what it's set to. Different sources recommended different things. If yours is set to be a high amount, change it either to a smaller amount or to be automatically set. If it's already checked to be automatic then change it to have a smaller maximum size.

For me it was set to be very large and I changed it to be automatic.

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