C: is nearly full but I can only account for half the data

[Windows Central Question]

Hi all,

My C: drive is nearly full, but I can only account for about half of the data on it. Most posts I've found direct users to clean the system restore points, but I don't have this feature on and thus have no restore points to delete. Any suggestions or thoughts? I've checked Hidden Files, but know there might be others that aren't visible...

 

[tgp]

Run something like WinDirStat if you can. It produces a very comprehensive graphical which is relatively easy to understand.

This is anecdotal and happened a long time ago, but I had an experience with Windows XP one time that was interesting. At the time I worked in customer support for a Microsoft ERP product. A customer called and said that it wasn't working correctly on her workstation.

I gave her verbal instructions as to how to get me connected remotely to her machine. The remote connection service we used would fail. Turns out it was because it requires a download of maybe 2 MB, but her hard drive did not have enough space for the download.

I knew immediately that while the ERP product was indeed not working correctly, it was the victim of a full hard drive. I walked her through deleting some unnecessary files so she could get me connected. I then put a cleanup tool on her PC and started it. She had an 80 GB hard drive.

The cleanup tool started, but it was taking a long time. As it was in the afternoon and getting to be quitting time, we made out that we would leave the tool running and check it in the morning. The next morning I discovered it had removed something like 180 GB of mostly temp files! Huh? On an 80 GB hard drive?

It turns out that the drive had a partition. Windows XP was using an 80 GB partition, and the rest was unallocated or something. I used EaseUS Partition Manager to fix the partition problem, and the issue was resolved.

 

[Golfdriver97]

You could try running Disk Cleanup. You might have a couple older Windows backups that are taking a lot of space.

 

[priyankaarya]

Yes I would suggest you use some cleanup Or update because of the window back up that is taking most of the space

 

[spicypadthai]

You won't see sizes for folders you don't have permission to access. For example, other profile folders in C:\Users. If there are other logins, then make sure you have permission on their C:\Users folder and check those. I've also seen the same thing with programs but on servers with things like MS Exchange. Even domain admins don't have permissions by default on some Exchange folders, like where a lot of the logs are located, so I was having the same problem accounting for used space on our mail server until I clicked into a couple folders to gain access.

 

[Ryujingt3]

You could try running Disk Cleanup. You might have a couple older Windows backups that are taking a lot of space.

This. Also, run it both on your hard drives and as system files. If you have old Windows installation from when you updated then removing that can clean up a lot of space.