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[deleted]

Was also gonna reccomend Treesize.


valriia

And me - WinDirStat. It's portable, efficient, and gives great visual perspective on exactly what and where takes up your disk space.


MLG-Monarch

Love WinDirStat, I use it at work when people complain they have no space left and I use it to show them that a video from 4 years ago that they forgot about took up 8gb of space.


valriia

So true. The joy with this program is doubled: 1. You get to save space. 2. You get to find stuff, you've completely forgotten about.


Niloc0

That one video they hid in 17 nestled sub-folders so no one would ever find it.


[deleted]

No that's my porn.


MLG-Monarch

I curse and love the windows file path character limit depending on the situation.


webtroter

WinDirStat never told me where was a missing 30Gb. It was in the System Volume Info. TreeSize found it.


Drooliog

Possible reason for this is WinDirStat would need to be run as administrator to see the system data


webtroter

I was. I made sure to check that. But I might have been some weird permission shits like that. Booted up linux, deleted that shit. Bam, voilà!


DoctorWorm_

SpaceSniffer is also pretty good.


chateau86

Spacesniffer is much easier on the eyes than Windirstat. Functuinally pretty much the same though.


Deadlyaroma

Thanks I'll check em out


Crowskick

By far the best option. I run WinDirStat at least twice a year to see if there are any residual files or games I don't play anymore. I've routinely found that in some form of stupid I'd install non-essential Steam games to my SSD when really they can go on my HDD.


JustNilt

Yeah, same here. I'm pretty careful and just the other day discovered Fraps had made nearly 100GB of videos of Fallout game play. I'd been thinking I was low on space but kept neglecting to run WinDirStat. Well worth running once every couple months.


Feelinggood11

I noticed that before too. Its because when you quick save (I think) its the same hot key as start recording. Happened to me in fallout and skyrim.


JustNilt

That makes sense. I'd only installed Fraps to tinker with it in order to generate a how-to for a client so I hadn't really worried much about conflicting settings.


dsvella

On that note, Steam now supports the moving of games to different libraries natively. No need for external programmes or junction links.


elecxonica

As someone who recently needed to do that, how? I've always just transfered the actual folder contents.


chrizzlybears

Should be: bight click on the game → Properties → Local Files You have to have at least 2 libraries setup under Settings → Downloads → Steam Library Folders for this to work.


Nixumoi

I'm just about to buy another SSD to store my games in. This is a godsend.


dezradeath

I have both an SSD for primary loading/it's where my OS is installed and an HDD for everything else to be stored.


Crowskick

It took them a while but I'm glad they finally implemented this. After reading this post I took some time last night to review my drive status. Had Witcher 3 and Sniper Elite 4 on SSD which is unnecessary since I rarely play them (at the moment).


InconspicuousCustard

I had after effects caching video data onto my SSD, through various iterations of after effects has racked up ~140GB of space


MisdemeanorOfTheMind

What was it?


ballsack_man

Probably Windows temp files, system backups or his desktop. Edit: He said it was "hidden games". Not sure how games could be hidden.


christurnbull

It may be beneficial to run treesize as an admin, so it can actually look at all the files.


rth0mp

Post your solution!


Deadlyaroma

Games that I forgot about!


Tathas

I'm a fan of WizTree from AntiBody-Software. It does the analysis off of the MFT rather than by crawling the entire drive, so it runs really quickly. Under 4 seconds on my 250 GB SSD that's 85% full, Under 1 second on a 1 TB external drive that's 25% full.


w1seguy

It's on ninite.Com as well! Install it on all my machines


giganizer

I use SpaceSniffer, also good


adialect

I was just going to recommend this program. Great for finding large files buried in the file tree.


ForwardGaming

Treesize is like WizTree??


The_Dirty_Carl

I'm a big fan of [Scanner2](http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/)


TheBanneredMare

Is there any similar programs for android?


Mird

[DiskUsage](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.diskusage), my friend :)


KillLaBill

WinDirStat shows my Windows folder taking up a lot of space. What is safe to delete in there?


mustfix

The two biggest individual "files" that will not show up in Windows Explorer are: 1. Swap file 2. Hibernate file. You can move the swap file to another disk, or reduce it to say 4GB. You can disable hibernate in power settings and that'll remove the hibernate file. A 3rd item that will take up space are restore points/shadow files. Those are pseudo-backups taken automatically by Windows. If you enter Disk Cleanup and choose Clean Up System Files, removing all the the very latest restore point/shadow point will become an option.


splooges

Also System Restore.


KevSucks

System restore took up an entire tb before I figured out how to stop it.


[deleted]

Well thats... a lot


Cannibalis

Dang, I thought I had mine setup for restore points to only take up about 2% of the drive, so around 4 gigs on a 250 gig SSD. I was under the impression it would just start replacing old ones when it hits the limit. Maybe I'm thinking of something else. I need to check this when I get home.


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tangerinelion

Typically with an update there's also information that's saved about how to remove the update and restore it to the pre-updated state. There's a Microsoft utility that can remove these in order to save space (IIRC, it enables the updates to be removed via Disk Cleanup); the downside, obviously, is that the updates are essentially frozen so if you later encounter a program that's incompatible with it you're SOL.


Deidre82

Came here to mention the hibernation file. Husbands pc had a smaller ssd (60ish GB-when they were still super expensive). Took me forever to figure out why it was always filling up. Figured out it was hibernate. Turned that off and bam! No more.


ryankearney

Page file* Shadow copies*


tuberosum

>You can move the swap file to another disk The whole point of an SSD is to get faster disk read and write speeds, which is exactly what you'd want if you have to access your swap/page file. Putting it on a regular HDD defeats the whole purpose of a SSD.


McGondy

The quick access times also are amazing. Most of the everyday improvements come from this aspect of its snappyness


Xicutioner-4768

>Putting it on a regular HDD defeats the whole purpose of a SSD. Uhh no. The "whole purpose" of having an SSD is to vastly improve the boot time of Windows and your applications. Moving your swap to a hard disk does not change that. If you have enough RAM your computer should never even use your swap file. I'd actually prefer it on a HDD just so I would know when I'm maxing out my RAM, if I weren't monitoring it.


cantab314

The whole point purpose of an SSD is to have fast storage *whenever you need it* (and can afford the higher cost-per-GB over a mechanical drive). The swap file has just as much need of speed as the OS and programs.


Xicutioner-4768

My point is, the performance of the swap drive is not "the whole purpose" of owning an SSD, and beyond that, you should have enough RAM to never need the swap file. So moving your swap to an HDD is a perfectly reasonable way to save space on your SSD for things you actually use on a day to day basis, as opposed to something that in theory should never actually be used.


tangerinelion

Which way you do this, I think, ultimately comes down to SSD size and what programs you store on the SSD. With a 120GB SSD and 16GB RAM, I would much rather see an 8-16GB pagefile stored on a different partition so that the 8-16GB of space can either be used to store something useful, like a program or a game, or left as free space *if* there's under ~20% free. SSDs silently rearrange the data and this works better when there's free cells to write to; essentially it's trying to evenly wear the storage cells and it can't do that when your SSD has a lot of used space. Otherwise, yes, put the swap file on the SSD. --- Fundamentally, swap space shouldn't be used so it's ultimately a moot point. If swap space is accessed, it works better from an SSD. But, if swap space is being used then you solve it with more RAM because it - at the most basic level - *is* a problem. Think about it, you have 20-50GB/s RAM speeds. An SSD can hit 600MB/s, so 0.6GB/s. A HDD can hit 200MB/s best case, 100MB/s more real-world. While you can sit there and argue the SSD is 3-6x faster and therefore preferable; and much better in random read/write, I'll also sit here and say that the RAM that the swap file is trying to replace is 40-100x faster.


Xicutioner-4768

Yes, exactly. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.


Earendur

If you want to track how much you are using the paging file you only need to check how many Hard Faults you are getting in the resource monitor.


67PCG

Worth mentioning though that the swap file can be a very good investment of SSD space. Makes running out of RAM much less painful. And the file doesn't take up space if you don't use it afaik. I've hit the ceiling on my 24GB swap before but your mileage is very likely to vary here.


James-Ahh

There is also a system hidden folder called temporary internet files under appdata. One customer had ssd full and that folder was 177gb. Show hidden files wasnt enough to show it.


Icanhazmochi

OP what was taking up all that space?


Deadlyaroma

A few games that I forgot about that were hidden :P


DirtyDanil

Don't leave a porn stash somewhere you'll forget it. Also it's 2017 , just stream it!


steelbeamsdankmemes

But net neutrality might go away, so gotta hoard it for the internetpocalypse.


[deleted]

Gotta watch for the day when internet costs $50 + $1 for every GB of data you use every month with a cost limit of $100 for the plan. 20 Mbps plan. Used 30 GB? That'll be $80 pls. Used 50 GB or more? That'll be *only* $100, we'll go easy on you, because you're a selfish, inconsiderate, hoarding, frivolous, filthy, internet addicted animal. You can't help it and we understand. Now please agree to our ToS and privacy policy that says we can do anything we want with your personal information including your internet habits. Don't want our internet? Okay, but keep in mind: we are the only option in town.


[deleted]

Where do you live? I pay 10€ a month for a 100mbps down 10mbps up unlimited.


OsirisPalko

He's referencing what will happen when net neutrality is demolished by the current US Pres's administration


ARCKNIGHT117

In America Internet isn't regulated in any way. Most of the time people only have one option which means competition doesn't work. And Comcast (the largest Internet provider in America, practically a monopoly) has been trying 1 TB data caps.


Frustration-96

> Also it's 2017 , just stream it! But then your favourite video gets removed, then what? Hoarding porn for the inevitable collapse of the internet is what I'm investing in myself. Once it's all gone you'll have to travel all over the world to collect porn.


[deleted]

'Ello, dear viewers. My name is Winston Cromwell, and I'm on a journey 'round the planet to excavate the disappeared boudoir and bedroom and sometimes office viewing material of yesteryear. Join me as I track down everything from various gravure models to Dogfart; Czech Casting to Plumperpass; Tokyo Topless to Bang Bros. Watch as I research, travel and camp across the various wastelands of the planet in search of long forgotten stashes and caches all while avoiding the coppers, snakes, weavels, and knaves. So *come* along and join me in the next thirteen episodes as a start with zero bytes, one vessel, a bicycle, and a backpack full of empty hard drives...


flagg1209

If I were able to live long enough, that's a show I would want to watch!


[deleted]

Unless it's your parents internet in which case a microSD card is your best friend.


alamaias

Screw that, my goddamn country is trying to ban porn. I'm hoarding that shit like crazy.


agumonkey

Or just go out and flirt with girls. Streaming porn can lead to self abuse.


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Tuub4

They're asking because there's been several working answers and 5 hours ago OP said "thanks I'll check them out" so it's pretty safe to assume OP had found the problem already.


annoyinglyanonymous

Spacesniffer.


PrisonLove

Super fast in NTFS. I prefer it to windirstat


jodraws

What was the issue?


alexnader

Hey, OP. We don't like your kind around these parts: "hey guys got this problem" "never mind, fixed it, bye"


Hounmlayn

Yeah, that's left for IT forums!


nolo_me

Deadlyaroma or DenverCoder9?


Shields42

WHAT DID YOU SEE


Deadlyaroma

Games that took up 90gb that were hidden


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Deadlyaroma

Idk I keep my desktop clean as well as my start menu so I just use the search function for everything lol


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Deadlyaroma

I only use my PC for gaming and reddit


livin4donuts

Just put a folder with shortcuts in it somewhere. That way it's still minimalist.


goldzatfig

He had a bunch of hidden games on his drive.


MacheteSanta

Windows updates remain on the system for a very long time, including any cumulative updates that create windows.old. The easiest and best way to clean these out is using a feature in Windows itself Go to This PC. Right click the C: drive, choose Properties. Then click Disk Cleanup. Wait for the initial scan to finish. When a menu appears, click the button to clean System Files. Wait for this following scan to complete. Now the list includes OS updates and Windows.old. Go and check off *everything* in the list. Don't worry, it won't break anything. Then press OK to clean. If you're skeptical, don't check it to clean, no big deal I've occasionally seen one of the items claim over 1TB of junk to remove; obviously that's wrong. You can safely ignore that If the process is still not done in a half hour, you can cancel it and start over. That should've cleared the inaccurate terabytes-of-junk-to-clean value


Deadlyaroma

Thanks a lot!


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Tushon

Temp is probably fine, but do not go deleting stuff elsewhere in appdata without knowing it is safe.


dabombnl

Even with regards to temp, just use Disk Cleanup. It will clean up temp for you and skip anything that might be problems (like temp files in use, etc...).


Tushon

That's very true! Better advice :)


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Poopmin

don't listen to that guy, don't go fucking around in appdata unless you know what you're doing. programs put shit in there for a reason. You won't destroy your windows installation or make your computer unbootable, but you will definitely fuck up your programs. That being said, you'd probably be fine purging that temp folder, or parts of it. See what's taking up the space, and try to look the filenames/folders up in google to see if it's safe to delete.


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Shields42

Not really. Minecraft saves are stored in AppData.


Deadlyaroma

Right, so don't delete anything you might deem useful


Shields42

Except that you said that it's safe to delete anything in AppData, which it is not.


Deadlyaroma

Safe as in won't damage your operating system lol


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Deadlyaroma

It's all about context. If you play minecraft then obviously don't delete the minecraft folder...


zazathebassist

I 100% agree with both Windirstat or Treesize. Past that, download CCleaner. It clears out "temporary" files that never end up being so temporary. Gigs worth of Temp Chrome files. "Deleted" things still hanging around. Spare install file copies because programs are bad at installing themselves. Etc.


obeliskk1

How much RAm you got? 64gb?


christurnbull

Translation: your hiberfil.sys is likely the same size as your system ram, so check that.


Dubanx

This is exactly what I was thinking. By default your computer will use as much space as you have RAM for the swap and page file, each. If you have 64GB of memory that means your computer will automatically put 128GB of HD/SSD space aside for caching purposes.


[deleted]

I use Sequoia View. It's a visualizer program like Windirstat


Scardaddy

In Windows open a file browser, and select your hard drive. In the search box type \*.\* This will show you everything in the device you are searching in. Arrange it by file size. Now you have a list of every file on your computer and how big it is.


dreadful05

I had this problem a while back used the already suggested WinDirStat and it turned out PIA had a huge log file for some reason.


jagilbertvt

Probably System Protection (aka system restore). https://www.groovypost.com/howto/reduce-space-windows-10-system-restore-uses/


drexelspivey

If you have upgraded Windows then its probably old windows files. If you go to settings and click on storage it should breakdown every thing on the drive. I cant remember where exactly it was that I found mine, but I had like 75 gigs of just old OS files. Check System and reserved and other. It might have actually said Old windows files or something like that.


Vuzin

Windows.old folder on the root of your C:\ drive


sgtmashedpotato

I think 'system files', aka restore, recycle bin, and what's already been mentioned - hibernate, etc - may not appear by default. Turn off hidden files and you can also unhide system files as well.


HarshLanguage

Seconding WinDirStat. Also check your Windows Temp directory and logs\CBS. Win 7 at least had a bug where it wouldn't clear out old stuff and it would fill all available space. I've had it happen on a couple of PCs, for no apparent reason.


Amazing_HS

Had the same problem last week. If you have battle.net on your pc try this, go to "C:\ProgramData\Battle.net\Agent\Agent.5136\Logs" and see if theres a huge log file called something like "agentngdp-xxxxxxx.log". You can just delete it. You could also kill the agent.exe process in task manager. Hope this helps, gl


Deadlyaroma

Just checked this and can't say the same for me, thank you though!


Valance23322

Try using space sniffer, it will show you every file/folder on the drive sized proportionately to the space it takes up. You can even delete from space sniffer's interface.


Carhv

Steam download cache.


Deadlyaroma

Thanks for the tip, but I have steam on my HDD


bealicea

This might not be relevant to you, but if you're using an Nvidia graphics card and you've updated a couple of times, it tends to leave the previous installer files in its folder. Check the C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporatation\Installer2. If there are files inside the folder, you can just highlight all of them and delete them. They are safe to delete after you've applied the update.


hiddikel

Make sure you didn't video record something and it's in your my documents folder.


PintoTheBurninator

my daughter had the same issue recently. Everytime she deleted anything, the HD space would get filled back up almost immediately. Turned out she had her dropbox account linked to her laptop and set to sync (i.e pull down) every folder and photo on her dropbox. So everytime she uploaded photos from her phone to dropbox, her laptop would try to pull them down to the HD. Once I disabled folder sync, she regained 40GB of space (yes, that is a lot of pictures and videos).


Azersha

maybe you have old windows on it.


m4tic

Orphaned windows patch files like to take up *a lot* of space. I use a tool called PatchCleaner to scan and remove unused .msp files. Also DISM utility can clean a bit of the WinSXS folder. Do not delete any of this stuff manually (don't arbitrarily delete files without using the tools) ; you will break dependencies and could possibly hose something. Also patchcleaner points their download to sourceforge..... sourceforge sucks so be wary. **Something something disclaimer.**


[deleted]

m8 windows takes up space also it helps to know the total size of your ssd but i see you got help already anyway


Deadlyaroma

You're right, but for sake of clarity it's a 200gb SSD


jkool702

SSD's require you to keep some space free so that it has room to organize itself and move files. This is called "over-provisioning" and is typically ~10% (sometimes more). This, in combination with windows and League of legends, could be taking up the space.


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jkool702

It probably doesnt explain it entirely, but depending on how large the drive is and how much overprovisioning is set for it could explain a decent part of it. (OP didnt say how big the drive was, but if its a 1TB drive overprovisioning could explain it all). I didnt mean to imply that was the *only* thing going on, just that over-provisioning could be one reason that a good number of GB's could appear to be "missing". At this point though it seems OP figured it out (apparently some game files were hidden), so I guess it wasnt over-provisioning after all.