Harddisk space depleting with minimal usage

Narun

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Hi guys,

This may be a novice question but I'm wondering why the harddisk space on my SP3 is depleting fast even though I don't store anything locally. Initially I had about 30 gigs of space. I stored everything on the cloud. No music or photos, literally none. I have about 10 metro UI apps and 5 desktop apps installed. Right now, I have 24 gigs even after I performed both normal and system disk clean ups. I used CCleaner and all the disk management tools out there. Still my harddisk space gradually reduces.

I've heard that W 8.1 stored all the deleted files somewhere and that may be the cause. If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd be really grateful.

Cheers,
 

dhbailey

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Have you emptied the trash? Have you checked the Temp directory? One or more of your apps may not be deleting its Temp files when it exits, so they just build up.

When you say your hard disk space "gradually reduces" are you saying that without you doing anything, periodically checking the Properties of your C: drive shows that the space is getting used up?
 

a5cent

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W8.1 doesn't retain *deleted* files (apart from the recycle bin).

I'd recommend first using MS' disk clean up utility, set to also clean up "system files".

Second I'd check how much space your system restore points are using.

Last, I'd check your installed store apps to see how much space they require.

Try those tactics and see what comes of it.
 

stephen_az

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Hi guys,

This may be a novice question but I'm wondering why the harddisk space on my SP3 is depleting fast even though I don't store anything locally. Initially I had about 30 gigs of space. I stored everything on the cloud. No music or photos, literally none. I have about 10 metro UI apps and 5 desktop apps installed. Right now, I have 24 gigs even after I performed both normal and system disk clean ups. I used CCleaner and all the disk management tools out there. Still my harddisk space gradually reduces.

I've heard that W 8.1 stored all the deleted files somewhere and that may be the cause. If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd be really grateful.

Cheers,
If you use disk cleanup and include system files in the scan, what is listed and what are the associated sizes. Same deal with system restore? Swipe in from the right, type system in the search box, tap system, tap system protection and then configure. It will then show the total size of system restore points and will give you options to limit the size reserved for those points. Two physical places to check via File Explorer are C:Windows\Software Distribution and C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Temp. Deleting files in the temp folder is simple. Since I do not know your skill level, I will not explain how to delete the contents of the Software Distribution folder (that is Windows stores downloaded updates from Windows Update). The folder C\Program Data can also get large over time but that is not to be deleted for obvious reasons. Finally, on the level, make sure stuff is really only syncing to the cloud. It is very easy to make a mistake on that one and have OneDrive store in both local and cloud storage.

Leaving the OS aside, what are the desktop applications? Some do set up caches and/or save updates to local machines. Some of Adobe's applications, for instance, have been known to take large chunks of space. Office in the past cached updates as well. Unfortunately at least these last couple are not easy or even necessarily possible to fix. Collectively, all of the above are also why I am perplexed as to why companies sell 64 GB models of x86 based Windows machines. Space can be sucked dry rather quickly....
 

Narun

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If you use disk cleanup and include system files in the scan, what is listed and what are the associated sizes. Same deal with system restore? Swipe in from the right, type system in the search box, tap system, tap system protection and then configure. It will then show the total size of system restore points and will give you options to limit the size reserved for those points.

I've set the usage to 2% (up to 1.2 GB) since the beginning. Right now it says it uses up only 218 MB.

what are the desktop applications? Some do set up caches and/or save updates to local machines. Some of Adobe's applications, for instance, have been known to take large chunks of space. Office in the past cached updates as well.

I have MSFT Office 2013 installed, then a torrent client, Bitdefender Antivirus, Winzip, CCleaner, Dropbox and Onedrive. That's it. How can I clear Office's caches?

Have you emptied the trash? Have you checked the Temp directory? One or more of your apps may not be deleting its Temp files when it exits, so they just build up.

When you say your hard disk space "gradually reduces" are you saying that without you doing anything, periodically checking the Properties of your C: drive shows that the space is getting used up?

I empty the bin very regularly - too often may be as I do it one every other day. And by gradually reducing, I mean without installing new apps or updates, the disk space reduces with normal usage. I mainly serve the net, work a word, powerpoint and excel, and take notes with onenote. My modern UI app size totals at just 780 MB.

W8.1 doesn't retain *deleted* files (apart from the recycle bin).

I'd recommend first using MS' disk clean up utility, set to also clean up "system files".

Second I'd check how much space your system restore points are using.

Last, I'd check your installed store apps to see how much space they require.

I did all of that. Still, I use to have 29-30 GB now I have only 24 GB after doing the system clean up to clean up system files and reducing the size of the backup files. I'm at lost why it keeps reducing even though I have not installed anything new to the machine.

------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for all the answers any way. If anybody has any other suggestions, I'm all ears!
 

anon(7901790)

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Hi guys,

This may be a novice question but I'm wondering why the harddisk space on my SP3 is depleting fast even though I don't store anything locally. Initially I had about 30 gigs of space. I stored everything on the cloud. No music or photos, literally none. I have about 10 metro UI apps and 5 desktop apps installed. Right now, I have 24 gigs even after I performed both normal and system disk clean ups. I used CCleaner and all the disk management tools out there. Still my harddisk space gradually reduces.

I've heard that W 8.1 stored all the deleted files somewhere and that may be the cause. If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd be really grateful.

Cheers,

That is because OneDrive caches files on your machine. If you make your OneDrive folder "available on-line only" that will solve the problem. The downside is you lose access to those files while offline.
 

Narun

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Thank you for the suggestion. My OneDrive is set for all files to be available only while connecting to the internet. In other words, it's not supposed to store anything locally. On other hand, my dropbox account needs to local storage but it only uses up 480 MB.

The total free space is now down to 23.8 GB from 24.2 GB from yesterday and all I did in between was serving the internet.
 

Narun

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Ok I downloaded WinDirStat to check what's going on with my disk space. Apparently, two things. First, OneDrive still takes up my local storage even though I set it as "online only". Very puzzling. Try to re-configure the OneDrive setting doesn't help either. Secondly, the Windows Installer Patches. Both of them combined take up almost 10 GB.

If anyone can help me with either of the issues, I would be really thankful. Can we safely delete the Windows Installer Patches?
 

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