Lost about 8 gb windows file

xNinjaFish · 07 Oct 2015

I only have the operating system on my SSD nothing else. its only a small SSD so thats the reason i use it just for booting. i had about 18GB left on the SSD last night and when i have turned on the pc today i have realised that im down to about 9GB left can anyone comfirm that an update of that size has taken place or is there a way to get back that space as i cant understand where it has gone or wether im going to have to update the SSD in the very near future due to these upgrades taking up so much room.

simrick · 07 Oct 2015

xNinjaFish said:

I only have the operating system on my SSD nothing else. its only a small SSD so thats the reason i use it just for booting. i had about 18GB left on the SSD last night and when i have turned on the pc today i have realised that im down to about 9GB left can anyone comfirm that an update of that size has taken place or is there a way to get back that space as i cant understand where it has gone or wether im going to have to update the SSD in the very near future due to these upgrades taking up so much room.

Hi xNinjaFish and welcome to Tenforums.

There's no update that I know of that is so large. Heck, the whole operating system fits on one DVD. You might want to have a look around your disk and see what's going on.

Word Man · 07 Oct 2015

Welcome, xNinjaFish.

You might want to start that investigation of what's going on with your disk with the Disk Cleanup tool, including the extended part. Brink has a tutorial on it here:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/3...0-a.html?ltr=D

I can't imagine something adding 8GB all of a sudden either but Disk Cleanup could help you spot more obvious suspects.

fdegrove · 08 Oct 2015

Hi,

8Gb is quite a lot but not that surprising knowing how Win 10 operates.
For instance: updates occupy 2 to 3 x their actual byte size on HD since Windows keeps copies in a few places, Edge tends to want to predict where you're going next so that takes quite a sizeable amount of cacheing too (you can stop it from doing so) easily growing well into the multi-giga range after a few hours of web surfing etc.

Still nothing to worry about as all this can be cleaned up quite easily once you understand what goes where and what's to be kept and what not. And sure enough there's plenty of proggies out there doing just that for you and more.
Use them with care and you'll be fine.

Cheers,

Boozad · 08 Oct 2015

First off I'd run either TreeSize or WinDirStat to see what's taking up the extra space. If there's anything there you don't need you should be able to decide what to do with it once you've checked all of the directories. If you have a Restore Point dated before this happened then it may be worth restoring and see what happens if the space is taken up again if the two aforementioned programs don't help identify the issue.

Lastly I'd really recommend getting a larger SSD. Leaving under 20GB free on an OS drive will eventually lead to issues as Windows grows and the space is taken up. You can pick up a decent 120GB SSD now for a little over forty quid.

f14tomcat · 08 Oct 2015

Just my 2c worth.... Tree Size is great... remember to always run as Admin, and sort by size. The monsters will jump right out!

xNinjaFish · 08 Oct 2015

Right i tried the program treesize and i noticed there was over 7GB worth of files in a folder called installer which was for the likes of microsoft office :/ when i double clicked i deleted the folder and regained my 7GB worth of space back and everything runs like it was, anybody on here know what could of been the cause for all these files in there? And more importantly what they do

fdegrove · 08 Oct 2015

Hi,

Do you happen to recall the name of that folder you deleted ?

Cheers,

topgundcp · 08 Oct 2015

The hidden C:\Windows\Installer folder is where some but not all applications uninstall files and folders are stored. Once you have deleted these files you will no longer be able to uninstall some of your applications.

What you should have done is trying to reduce the size by using some cleanup tools such as: WICleanup – Windows Installer unused files cleanup tool or just copy the folder to another HD before deleting it so you can copy back in case you want to uninstall some of the applications such as MS Office, Adobe Products etc...

Another place you can clean up is to delete all the contents under:
C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download
This is where all the updates downloaded & installed and is perfectly safe to delete.
NOTE: diskcleanup does not delete these files. You'd have to manually delete them.

In addition, you can run the command below from Admin command prompt to reclaim some space in WinSxS:
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup

Word Man · 08 Oct 2015

It's been noted elsewhere that Office installs are notorious for leaving gobs (as in GB) of installer files behind after an install. Disk Cleanup tool would also have addressed this. You might want to check via extended option of Disk Cleanup that there aren't a large amount of update files let behind, particularly if you are taking other Microsoft program updates along with Windows updates.