Hard drive is full, but of what?


  1. Posts : 4
    Windows 7
       #1

    Hard drive is full, but of what?


    I just reinstalled Windows 10 a week ago, because I was having all kinds of problems with a black screen. Maybe some of you read my post about my old boot disk coming up blank. But now I have the opposite problem: when I installed Windows 7 the second time, I used a different hard drive as my boot disk. Now Windows tells me that my boot disk is 75% full--it has 536 GB used! Checking 'Storage' in settings tells me that 496 GB are consumed by directories classified as 'Other', but the largest have only 1 with more than a GB, most of the rest are less than a MB. Checking the disk for errors finds no problem. Where did my storage go?
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 18,421
    Windows 11 Pro
       #2
      My Computer


  3. whs
    Posts : 1,935
    Windows 7
       #3

    I would just delete all those junk entries.
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 4
    Windows 7
    Thread Starter
       #4

    Yes, thank you, I used disk cleanup and deleted the junk, but it found only a few tens of megabytes to remove, not hundreds of gigabytes (not counting its backup of Windows 7, which I wish to keep for now--but that's only 16GB). But I thank you for your efforts. I've also looked at hidden and system files, run chkdsk in the command prompt, and checked the settings in System Protection but nothing accounts for this weird amount of space being used.
      My Computer


  5. whs
    Posts : 1,935
    Windows 7
       #5

    Did you check whether there were any restore points. The command would be

    Vssadmin list shadowstorage
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 93
    64-bit Windows 10 Home
       #6

    Also, I use a tool, 'WinDirStat', that readily identifies what is on your drives- It is free.
      My Computer


  7. Posts : 4
    Windows 7
    Thread Starter
       #7

    Ack! Finally found a Windows Image Backup from 7/22/2015 (and I only installed last week!) that was taking up almost 400 GB.
      My Computer


  8. whs
    Posts : 1,935
    Windows 7
       #8

    DaveGrant01 said:
    Also, I use a tool, 'WinDirStat', that readily identifies what is on your drives- It is free.
    That is a good program. But it does not show you the shadows.
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  9. whs
    Posts : 1,935
    Windows 7
       #9

    RoyFeni said:
    Ack! Finally found a Windows Image Backup from 7/22/2015 (and I only installed last week!) that was taking up almost 400 GB.
    Yikes, that was a big one. It must have imaged more than C. There was probably system stuff on other partitions too.
      My Computer


 

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