Over 50GB of Temp Files in AppData Subfolder

You may be running into some compressed archives created by the programs you have been using that will automatically stash things under your user account regardless of any custom install to folders on other drives. You may think you are only seeing a few smail files until realizing that they are not that small rather then simply assume the unexplained drive space is only being taken up by temp folders which are mostly only kilibytes in size.

I would be looking in those folders and right clicking on them to see how much the properties shows.

swarfega said:

Just to clarify, Appdata isn't a temp folder, it holds important settings for your software.

In the folder appdata there are folders local and temp. I have a shortcut to this temp folder on my desktop to quickly access and delete files here. I've done this cleaning manually for over five years now with Windows 7 and now Windows 10 without any problems what so ever.
Many programs use this folder as a temporary storage and if you don't clean it it will eventually fill up your drive.

All of 239mb less then a 1/4 of 1gb here after 3 full years.



I wouldn't be in such a rush to clean that out entirely however as well as in the Local Low temp which has a MS empty folder with empty sub folder safe to remove however.



You may just run into something like this where an active program is still accessing files there! Or after deletion a program may prompt that a file is missing. That's why there's a temp folder for temp files which each program may dump or overwrite automatically.

I always use this and run as Admin: TFC Temporary file removal tool to delete all the files in temp folders including the one under AppData\Local\Temp. The program will kill all processes that are currently locking some of the temp files.
FYI, you are not gonna hurt anything by doing this. After cleaning using the tool above, just sign out and sign back in.

I simply take ownership over any stubborn files I want to see gone while the same program will simply write an immediate replacement! The temp folder seen there isn't for temp installation logs but regularly accessed by the various programs you have on to write the temp files that will usually be overwritten in time from regular use of the program itself. Some of those are configuration log type files..

Other temp locations will tend to be seeing the temp logs for program installs as well as MS updates that typically add up in volume while each of those are generally only severla Kbytes in size. And as far as 10 is concerned you no longer will be finding an AppData folder to begin with since there isn't one! 10 has a totally new layout of things now compared to how 7 was as far as no longer seeing the "users]account name\AppData]" as well as the ProgramData and Perflogs folders at the root of C. The dual platforrm layout of folders now has to consider Tablet as well as Desktop in how things are laid out.

halasz said:

Neither Disk Cleanup or CCleaner will tidy this folder for you.

Well CCleaner removes files from Temp folders just fine, if you you uncheck 24 hour limitation.

Want to know what the total size on disk is for a clean install of 10? And why do I now see 433gb taken up on a 1tb drive 10 was installed onto? 14gb for the 64bit flavor of 10 Pro subtract from 433gb out of 920gb useable drive space for a 1tb drive equals files I saw added to the drive! 433 - 14 = 422gb less a few possible megabytes of temp files and folders likely amounts to 421.99gb of program installs as well as downloads and files copied over to the drive.. That's where the drive space gets taken by!