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I have a fairly new install of Windows 7SP1 and applications that hadn't changed much on a 500Gb (ok, 465Gb) SSD. All told, these used about 270Gb. The disk is a Samsung 850 EVO SSD, 500Gb purchased new with a fresh install of Windows last December, that ran without a hitch until a few weeks ago. Thus, there are no previous Windows installations, hidden partitions (besides swap, possibly), etc. NTFS formatted disk.

A few weeks ago, I basically ran out of disk space. I ended up having to recover some files which Windows wiped out doing a System Restore. Since then, I've only had about 20Gb free. In other words, there's roughly about 170Gb missing. I've done all the obvious stuff:

  • Used Windirstat and other tools to verify that I'm only using about 270Gb
  • Turned off System Protection
  • Never had Indexing on - verified off
  • No crash dumps
  • Pagefile is 8Gb
  • Disabled Hibernation, which I never use
  • Virtually no temp files
  • Disk cleanup came up with virtually nothing
  • SSD is not over-provisioned
  • Checked for ADs. About 100 found taking 32 bytes each on disk.

There are no hidden partitions that I can find. chkdsk and sfc came up with nothing. Apart from checking for data streams, I'm out of ideas.

Windirstat

enter image description here

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  • How new is the SSD? What exactly is your question? If you have run WinDirStat, as an Administrator, what did it indicate was using your space?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Sep 5, 2018 at 1:56
  • It was bought and installed in December. I hadn't paid close attention to disk space, but I do recall the first few months free disk space was virtually unchanged, about 170Gb free.
    – user484603
    Commented Sep 5, 2018 at 2:04
  • Edit your question to include the information from WinDirStat, when it was running as an Administrator, did you figure out the reason you initially ran out of space?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Sep 5, 2018 at 2:07
  • 2
    Looking for a screenshot of WinDirStat ran as an Administrator. I have absolutely no idea what "ADS". You should also provide a screenshot of the Disk Management. What is the make and model of your SSD? Did you purchase the SSD new or was it purchased used?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Sep 5, 2018 at 2:36
  • I assume you are aware of a 153 GB folder named build, without a score of disk management, my guess you have multiple partitions.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Sep 5, 2018 at 2:47

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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There are no other users on this PC. There is only a Default profile with virtually nothing in it. I did run Windirstat as admin.

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Install Space Sniffer.. enter image description here

Possibly you have a program creating a ridiculously large temp or cache file?

When I experience these problems I just use SpaceSniffer which breaks down everything on my computer including hidden files and lets me manually remove or investigate them.

http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/download.html

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It sounds like you have an HP pc. This seems to bc an issue with hp in my experience. Usually it is an improperly dual booted drive or improperly allocated space. But that doesnt sound like the issue. You say you ran diskpart and found no hidden partitions? If thats the case then the extra space may have an improper pointer record and cant be identified. Sfc will not find this bc it is not considered valid space to check. As primitive as it sounds, try opening a command prompt and typing diskmgmt.msc as administrator. This will open the gui for the diskmanager. Right click the drive and select properties. Run disk cleanup. But before running make sure to select clean system files. Then delete previous installations of windows. That should fix.your problem. It will delete all older installations of windows being that it was reinstalled, windows saves the old installation for recovery purposes. That should fix the issue.

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  • I built the PC myself about 6 years ago. Still runs like a champ (no internet on it, so no anti-virus, etc.!) I had checked diskmgmt previously and again just now, but there are no hidden partitions or unallocated space. Diskpart showed the same. I didn't find a disk cleanup option within diskmgmt even under tools - just Error Checking, Defrag and Backup. This was a fresh install so no older copies of Windows. Ironically, had zero problems when I ran an HDD. This isn't exactly inspiring confidence in the new SSD!
    – user484603
    Commented Sep 5, 2018 at 2:50
  • @Crayoneater This problem has nothing to do with your SSD. WinDirStat can only list files your user has access to, and by default, that does include the shadow volume used by previous version.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Sep 5, 2018 at 11:57

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