Inaccurate C: drive capacity reading/Unable delete winold folders

tosalet said:

The System Volume info is shown highlighted - and empty!

WinDirStat does not show the full picture. TreeSize Free shows everything.
https://portableapps.com/apps/utilit...-free-portable

Here they are, side by side, looking at the same C: drive. In particular, look at System Volume Information, highlighted in both. WinDirStat says it's empty, TreeSize shows the files and folders it contains.

tosalet said:

Aha! Secret stuff, thank you! Success at last. So my last question is; can I safely delete the biggies?

A very good question - and one I'm afraid I cannot answer for you. I've never seen anything like those particular files. Perhaps @Brink, @zbook, @NavyLCDR or others could shed some light?

What I would say is that I have recently deleted some AppxStaging folders from under SystemRestore, releasing some 3GB that deleting restore points wouldn't touch. So far there's no ill effects, but I did make a system image to fall back on, just in case.

BTW: the Chkdsk folder is interesting - I have some report's dating back to 2014 in mine, long before Win10 was installed.


Edit: creating a restore point manually does create files with similar names to yours, so my guess is that they are leftovers from early restore points that somehow get overlooked when clearing out restore points the 'official' way. But that's just a guess, so make a system image before deleting anything.

The safest way to delete all but the most current restore point is to use the Disk Cleanup option. Option one, step #7, of this tutorial.

Open and Use Disk Cleanup in Windows 10 Windows 10 Tutorials

f14tomcat said:

The safest way to delete all but the most current restore point is to use the Disk Cleanup option. Option one, step #7, of this tutorial.

Seems that has already been tried. Post #10 said...

tosalet said:

I actually deleted all restore points except a new one before starting this thread.

Bree said:

Seems that has already been tried. Post #10 said...

Ok, didn't say how it was done. 3rd party, MS.....

Another option would be to set system protection off for all drives temporarily, and take the option to delete all restore points. Turn it back on and create one as a starter.

f14tomcat said:

Another option would be to set system protection off for all drives temporarily, and take the option to delete all restore points. Turn it back on and create one as a starter.

Actually, that's what I tried when I saw that my "C:\System Volume Information\SystemRestore\AppxStaging" folder occupied 3GB. Even with system protection turned off it remained there. Turning system protection back on said that no space was being used for restore points, despite the fact that I could see that some 3GB were in use. AppxStaging was created on 20th Oct. 2017 and seemed to contain a copy of everything from my "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps" folder. Strange - but deleted now.

Page file ?

Hiber file ?

AddRAM said:

Page file ?
Hiber file ?

Post #12 shows that the 'missing' space is to be found in 'C:\System Volume Information' which occupies 44.2GB.