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I have an SSD with ~125GB formatted, and it claims ~99GB are consumed. It has been rapidly consuming storage space for weeks. I have found many instances of unexplained SSD consumption online, none of which seemed to have my answer. SSD Data Loss Over Time

My user's directory has been properly moved to another HDD with a junction so that none of my normal data storage is done on the SSD. Windows and Program Files are still present.

However, the strange thing is that I only have 46GB of data on the drive as confirmed by directory tree listings and Total Commander viewing hidden and system files. Display with Hidden Files

WinDirStat, manual inspection, and any other storage consumption analysis tool report 46GB of data on the drive when launched from a copy of Windows running on the SSD. Storage Analysis This is a big discrepancy from the ~99GB consumed. Where is all my free space?

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  • This is really not a question but an explanation of something I didn't find explained elsewhere before finding the answer myself. Please tell me if this doesn't belong here.
    – user1695505
    Commented May 20, 2015 at 9:54
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    @user1695505 Format it as a question then add the solution as an answer. Also add "answered" or "solved" to the title and accept your own answer. Then it is clear.
    – Ctrl-alt-dlt
    Commented May 20, 2015 at 9:55
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    You need to run WinDirStat as admin so it finds everything. Also, as you've noted this is not a question at all. You could break this up into a question and an answer, but there are lots of duplicates on this very site and so it would get closed anyway. @JamieWilletts: No point really.
    – Karan
    Commented May 20, 2015 at 9:56
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    @JamieWilletts: Please do not ask people to add "answered" or "solved" to the title. This is not a forum.
    – Karan
    Commented May 20, 2015 at 17:21
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    @JamieWilletts: The way to do that on SU is to accept your own answer (need to wait 2 days after the question was asked to do that).
    – fixer1234
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 4:08

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
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If you did not run WinDirStat as admin, it would only be able to report on space used by files that it is allowed to see.

Run it again as administrator, and it should start showing you the total picture of where the space has gone.

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  • I tested it with admin and without with a folder with a hidden folder inside, with a hidden file inside, it displayed the total size including hidden files without and with admin privileges.
    – Santropedro
    Commented Nov 28, 2018 at 23:16
  • This helped me troubleshoot a users PC. Without running as admin it showed the hard drive using 50 GB when it was in fact using 45 GB. The culprit files were MSSQL files.
    – leeman24
    Commented Oct 7, 2020 at 18:42
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    Even running as an admin isn't enough, you'd need to run as LocalSystem. I once had a build agent running as LocalSystem which cached data in C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local which WinDirStat couldn't see. See reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/6tm8aw/…
    – Chris Oldwood
    Commented Sep 9, 2022 at 10:05
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So what is taking up all this space? System restore. I was able to determine this by loading the drive through another computer and viewing hidden/system files.

In my case System Restore was currently configured to consume 50% of the storage space of the drive, thus this massive System Volume Information folder. To reconfigure, [Right Click]Computer --> Properties --> System Protection (on right) --> Configure Culprit

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  • This is the thread's official answer and will be accepted in 2 days time when allowed.
    – user1695505
    Commented May 20, 2015 at 10:03
  • This is a "question," not a "thread." Threads have "discussions" with "replies" but questions just have "answers." Check out this question: Is Stack Overflow a forum?
    – Kevin Panko
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 14:35
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    @user1695505, I work for Microsoft and by a popular opinion should therefore know how Windows works. Well, this question saved my day anyways :D Could you please already select it as accepted, even though the 2 days passed almost 5 years ago?
    – Danek
    Commented Mar 7, 2020 at 10:23
  • This is the way. I had 43GB+ of space being stolen by System Protection and the Protection was turned off!
    – Patrick
    Commented Oct 29, 2022 at 18:22
  • This is the answer I was looking for, for 2 years. 50% of my disk's storage was occupied and I couldn't find how. Thank you.
    – Chris K
    Commented May 16, 2023 at 9:43
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WinDirStat does not report folders owned by SYSTEM user. In my case I had a 32 Gb folder C:\Sysmon, not accessible to administrator user and not reported by WinDirStat.

Use another tool like SpaceSniffer that is able to scan also folders owned by SYSTEM user.

If you access to a folder owned by SYSTEM user, you need to reboot windows in recovery mode and then use command line mode or you can also use WindowsPE.

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Running WinDirStat as any admin may not help in certain cases, in my case for files which were created by aborted XBox game pass downloads. These will only be seen by WinDirStat if it is started from the (built in in Windows but usually disabled) Administrator account.

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In my case, the drive is in exFAT format where the files may use much more space than their actual size. The missing free space is at the end of the big disk blocks for many small files.

Windows reports that the disk almost full: 6.14 GB free of 119 GB

WinDirStat reports that only 16.8 GB is used for the whole disk.

Windows directory properties show both the sum of file sizes (3.07GB) and the disk usage (16.5GB) for one of the directories. WinDirStat reports 3.1GB for this directory.

The unix du (disk usage) utility (in MINGW64, Git Bash in my case) shows the real disk usage including the empty space at the end of files: output of the "du -sh" command, 17 GB for the directory in question.

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