Local C drive eating up space, trying to find answer

mik07 · 02 Oct 2020

I am seeing my C drive is running out of space. I usually have 2 instance of firefox running with alot of tabs, this translates to more memory. I am trying to find what is going on, I downloaded the WinDirStat, looked into some of the areas where its being used a lot. Btw, I have checked for any abnormality, there nothing that came up weird across the system.
Another thing I checked was, if the backup were consuming the space, it is not that either.

As in the screenshot, below, Its shows pagefile.sys and hiberfile.sys is , how would clean up the

Local C drive eating up space, trying to find answer-screenshot_windirstat.jpg

Berton · 02 Oct 2020

There may be a Windows.old folder on the C:|Boot|System drive or partition. Disk Cleanup usually gets rid of it for me. Possible to also have a Windows.old.old.

What Is the Windows.old Folder?
This folder is created when you upgrade from one version of Windows to another, starting with Windows Vista. The Windows.old folder contains all the files and data from your previous Windows installation. You can use it to restore your system to the old version of Windows if you don’t like the new version. If you’re looking for a specific file that wasn’t properly copied to your new Windows installation, you also could dig into the Windows.old folder and find it.

mik07 · 02 Oct 2020

I have checked for the windows.old files, there nothing in there. I have done disk cleanup, nothing particularly that point out any thing.

I found the culprit, Under sandboxie, firefox cache2 was about 17gb

While, looking into more, I was able to find WinSxS, Under Windows .
I was wondering if it is safe to delete these files, I searched WinSxS, There's a guide on how to delete
Clean Up Component Store (WinSxS folder) in Windows 10

steve108 · 02 Oct 2020

I have done the cleanup WinSxS tutorial you referenced with no issues, but always good to have a full backup using Macrium Reflect Free which most of us here use. Saved about 4 GB of space.

If you've never tried WizTree, it's much faster then WinDirStat or TreeSize based on my experience.

f14tomcat · 02 Oct 2020

mik07 said:

I have checked for the windows.old files, there nothing in there. I have done disk cleanup, nothing particularly that point out any thing.

I found the culprit, Under sandboxie, firefox cache2 was about 17gb

While, looking into more, I was able to find WinSxS, Under Windows .
I was wondering if it is safe to delete these files, I searched WinSxS, There's a guide on how to delete
Clean Up Component Store (WinSxS folder) in Windows 10

If you follow the steps in Shawn's tutorial here in Tenforums, it is quite safe. Do Not attempt to just manually start deleting files.

f14tomcat · 02 Oct 2020

Up top it looked like you were starting to ask about hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys. If you do not use Fast Startup or Hibernation, the 4GB for hiberfil.sys can be reclaimed. Sleep mode does not require hiberfil.sys, but Hibernation does.

Do you use Sleep or Hibernation?

f14tomcat · 02 Oct 2020

Jumping around a bit, sorry. To help determine if messing with WinSxS is worthwhile, run this quick command at an Admin command prompt, and post a pic of the results. It will tell a lot.

Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore

It's from this tutorial:

Analyze Component Store (WinSxS folder) in Windows 10

mik07 · 02 Oct 2020

f14tomcat said:

Up top it looked like you were starting to ask about hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys. If you do not use Fast Startup or Hibernation, the 4GB for hiberfil.sys can be reclaimed. Sleep mode does not require hiberfil.sys, but Hibernation does.

Do you use Sleep or Hibernation?

After checking in power options
Its will sleep when its on battery, also hibernate when its in battery as well.

f14tomcat said:

Jumping around a bit, sorry. To help determine if messing with WinSxS is worthwhile, run this quick command at an Admin command prompt, and post a pic of the results. It will tell a lot.

[B]Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore

Local C drive eating up space, trying to find answer-component_store.jpg

f14tomcat · 02 Oct 2020

mik07 said:

After checking in power options
Its will sleep when its on battery, also hibernate when its in battery as well.

Yes sir! You'll get back over 2GB! Maybe 3GB. That's certainly worth running the cleanup. Approx time on the cleanup and machines do vary, 10mins to 30mins. Just let it proceed. Reboot it after to get the full effect (temp files to cleanup and that stuff).