Surface Pro - what is eating all my disc space?

I have a Surface - I can't recall the exact version but i bought it almost two years ago, so whatever the new model was back then.

The last few days I have been hurting real bad for disc space; today I am completely crippled. And for the life of me I can't figure out why.

Okay about a month ago I started using it as a second computer for developing a game I'm working on, and copying over all my project files plus unity and Visual Studio ate up a big chunk of my disc space. So I wasn't surprised when last week I started getting notifications that I was low on disc space. But I keep losing more and more space when I haven't even been working on that project.

Last week I had checked my drive and I had a few gigs of space, but I wasn't terribly concerned as I wasn't going to be adding anything for a while. But even though I hadn't downloaded anything or saved any new files, the other day I suddenly had less than a gig of space. Later I found there was a windows update that was downloaded, and after it was applied I had some breathing room again, but I was still unusually low on space.
And then today I found myself down to just over 200 megs of disc space.
i checked if another update was downloading, but it says I'm up-to-date now. I figured some programs might have been eating up some space, like perhaps Chrome is saving stuff locally, maybe clip studio is as well, but I closed those programs and i didn't get any more space. I went into my downloads folder and deleted at least a gig worth of installation programs, emptied the recycle bin, and then immediately checked my disc space again and found that I now have even LESS space, only about 180 megs.

What is eating up my disc space?
I'm not even running anything at this point. I haven't been downloading anything; I've barely used more than a web browser, mostly just to watch some YouTube.
I honestly doubt that I have a virus because I haven't been anywhere trusted that I haven't been a hundred times before, but even if i did I don't even have the drive space to install something to scan for it.
But failing a virus then Chrome or some other program is just s****ing all over my C drive and won't clean itself up. Is there a way to get it to clean itself up? Or find what program is doing this?

Have you tried using---disk savvy---or ---WinDirStat---to analyse disk space usage?

Try using a program such as "TreeSize" to help you easily find where all that space is being used:

Disk Space Manager TreeSize | JAM Software

Also, you might want to go into the properties for your drive and select the Disk Cleanup option to see what kind of space you can free up and get a better understanding of what is using the space. Make sure to visit the More Options tab and look at the available options there.

Finally, I would also suggest going into Setting and looking at the storage options, in particular, Storage Sense, to see if that can help you automate cleanup tasks.

See the screenshots below:

Check the presence and sizes of :
C:\pagefile.sys
C:\Windows\WinSxS
C:\Windows\Temp

I found a couple things I didn't need and freed up some space to work, so I'm not crushed at the moment. But I'm still wondering what could be causing me to swing several gigs around.

I have not tried any programs to monitor my disc space; I've never felt the need for one in the past and I'm honestly not too sure what they would do. But I am interested now. What options do these different programs offer?

Disc Cleanup is only offering to save me 35 megs of space. Is there any way to see how much space is being used by those old restore points? I mean, I haven't need those in quite a while, but that's a hell of a thing to find you need but no longer have...

pjhutch said:

Check the presence and sizes of :
C:\pagefile.sys
C:\Windows\WinSxS
C:\Windows\Temp

pagefie is 6.51 gigs, WinSxS is 7.37 Gb (size on disc 5.12), and temp is just 15 megs.

...And restore points aren't even enabled.
Wow. I'm surpised that isn't on by factory default.

Marscaleb said:

I have not tried any programs to monitor my disc space; I've never felt the need for one in the past and I'm honestly not too sure what they would do. But I am interested now. What options do these different programs offer?

You have a need now, so forget options - just run one of them. My favourite is Wiztree (blazingly fast).

When file history is enabled, it may take a lot of space. Check its settings.