What is causing my HD to "add 5 GB "every day on Windows 10 system?

I am baffled and need your help. Running Windows 10 Pro build 1903. My boot drive is a 512GB Samsung 970Pro NVMe. My Windows is a legal copy (not hacked version).

I noticed that starting about 2 months ago (even while running previous Windows 10 Pro 1809 build) that every day that I use the PC, about 5GB of mysterious data gets added to my hard drive. So basically at this pace, I will run out of space on my system drive (C:) in about 20 days. Upgrading to build 1903 hasn't helped.

I have tried figuring out which program may be doing this but so far no luck. I have tried to do a Windows Explorer "Search" for recently used/added files 512MB+ or 1GB+ but nothing looks out of ordinary. I have cleaned out the C:\Users\AppData\ Local\Temp and C:\Windows\Temp directories but that didn't help.

There must be some logging file or something likewise that is causing this behavior. I have run Malware Bytes and Kaspersky KAV virus scans (on all my drives) and they both come up with nothing. Otherwise, my system is running fast and there are no issues at all.

Can someone give me some other ideas of how and what to look for?

Thank you for the excellent suggestions. I shall then do it and will give you an update in 2-3 days.

Good day. As promised, I now have the updated view of drive C: . I will post the general screen shot from September 3 and compare it to September 6.

September 3:



September 6:


As one can see, my drive went from 339GB used to 345GB used in 3 days. The Program Files (x86) increased by 1.5GB but the real difference is System Volume Information folder, which went from 25.3GB to 30.1GB.

Sorry for not to having the September 3rd System Volume Information sub-folders folder tree opened, but at least I did it for September 6 version.

Any ideas what is going on? Please tell me if you need any other subfolder trees opened, so we can again compare in like 3-4 days.

Thank you for trying to help but it's getting silly as I am going to run out of space soon...

Well, I had a similar problem with my C drive always creeping up with more data. I used the TreeSize free program (excellent program by the way) and determined exactly what Mystiky discovered. The System Volume Information folder was growing almost on a daily basis. Turns it it was the accumulation of system restore checkpoint files. After using Ccleaner to delete all but the last checkpoint, I've recovered almost 10Gig of space. Thanks to Compumind for the tip.

mystiky said:

...the real difference is System Volume Information folder, which went from 25.3GB to 30.1GB.

System Volume Information is where your restore points are held. Your big files there have names that are typical for restore points. You should be able to recover the used space by deleting restore points. Automatic restore points may be responsible for eating up your disk space. You can adjust the frequency of automatic restore points, or even turn off their automatic creation. You can also set a maximum limit for the space restore points can consume.

Delete System Restore Points in Windows 10

Change System Restore Point Creation Frequency in Windows 10

Change System Protection Max Storage Size for Drive in Windows 10

Bree said:

System Volume Information is where your restore points are held. Your big files there have names that are typical for restore points. You should be able to recover the used space by deleting restore points. Automatic restore points may be responsible for eating up your disk space. You can adjust the frequency of automatic restore points, or even turn off their automatic creation. You can also set a maximum limit for the space restore points can consume.

Delete System Restore Points in Windows 10

Change System Restore Point Creation Frequency in Windows 10

Change System Protection Max Storage Size for Drive in Windows 10

Yep, it was System Restore that was doing it! I changed it to only use 15GB and immediately I got almost 15GB back.All good.Thank you everyone!