What's filling up my Surface 2? how to make space?

[Nickkk101]

Last night during patch Tuesday updates, I got a 'low space' warning on my 32GB S2 for the first time and wondered how and why it was filling up.. there is very little media on the device as most of my media/pics/video is in in Onedrive and its telling me its almost completely full. I understand the OS itself takes a considerable chunk of the drive up but its not like I have several GB's of pics and video on here.. its mostly used for browsing..

The disk utility in settings is only allowing me to clear at best 1.5gbs of space, but it feels like I should be able to clear more. I've cleared out any apps I wasn't using but the space created is minimal. I'm currently sitting at 27gb full..
Any tips?

 

[bockersjv]

Save the back up partition to a USB drive. Then do a windows search for files over 1Gb and see if you can spot some culprits.

 

[bockersjv]

Try this blog. There are three parts to read.
Free up space on Surface tablets - Part 1 - LoveMySurface - Everything you need to know about Microsoft Surface TabletsLoveMySurface ? Everything you need to know about Microsoft Surface Tablets

 

[WillysJeepMan]

I strongly recommend AGAINST removing the recovery image from the Surface. Historically, there has been a need to restore/refresh after a problematic patch/update Tuesday. Having the recovery image onboard makes fixing issues much easier.

What I DO recommend is doing a web search for: free up space on windows 8 tablet

For example: there are common system folders that will not be cleaned up by Disk Cleanup... stuff like C:\Windows\Software Distribution\Download can get large.

 

[Nickkk101]

I strongly recommend AGAINST removing the recovery image from the Surface. Historically, there has been a need to restore/refresh after a problematic patch/update Tuesday. Having the recovery image onboard makes fixing issues much easier.

What I DO recommend is doing a web search for: free up space on windows 8 tablet

For example: there are common system folders that will not be cleaned up by Disk Cleanup... stuff like C:\Windows\Software Distribution\Download can get large.

Yeah im not really cool with deleting any recovery media personally ,so I wont be doing that. I know the 2 had only around 16gb of space after the OS on the 32gb device but im stil surprised I've burned through almost all of that in a short time with just browsing. Will look into some of the disc clean options. I just can't seem to uncover those large chunks of data hiding..

 

[Harrie-S]

Yeah im not really cool with deleting any recovery media personally ,so I wont be doing that. I know the 2 had only around 16gb of space after the OS on the 32gb device but im stil surprised I've burned through almost all of that in a short time with just browsing. Will look into some of the disc clean options. I just can't seem to uncover those large chunks of data hiding..

You said that you stored your media/pics/video on OneDrive but are you sure that non of these files are "offline" available if so they will also occupy space on your surface.

 

[Nickkk101]

You said that you stored your media/pics/video on OneDrive but are you sure that non of these files are "offline" available if so they will also occupy space on your surface.

Hmm, what's the easiest way to check?

EDIT: I looked in the OneDrive settings as you suggested just now (modern app) and unchecked the off-line mode (it appears it was selected) but its made no huge difference in space. 'picture' info is listed at only 2.02 MB.. everything else is listed at smaller sizes. The disk clean up utility in control panel has rescued a couple of GB but I'm still on about 25gb full..

I want to know what's taking up all this space! GB's worth of it. So annoying!

 

[fpostrow]

check your "C:\Users\AppData\Local\Packages\windows_ie_ac_001\AC" folder. If it's like my sons its chewing up about 10GB's of space and I have no idea why or how to clear it. Any ideas?

​Just spent a while chatting with support which ended with reset the device using your recovery thumb drive. First they suggested to move the recovery partition, which I did years ago, then they suggested searching for windows.old, nothing there. So the end result is to reset using recovery media. At least all the data is on onedrive on an external Sd card so nothing gets lost. Anyone else have any other solutions?

 

[Harrie-S]

Hmm, what's the easiest way to check?

EDIT: I looked in the OneDrive settings as you suggested just now (modern app) and unchecked the off-line mode (it appears it was selected) but its made no huge difference in space. 'picture' info is listed at only 2.02 MB.. everything else is listed at smaller sizes. The disk clean up utility in control panel has rescued a couple of GB but I'm still on about 25gb full..

I want to know what's taking up all this space! GB's worth of it. So annoying!

Actual what you now "only" did is uncheck the "offline mode" but they are still saved on your surface 2. What you now need to do is log off so go to your local account.
And the find the onedrive (skydrive) folder on c:/users/[your name] /skydrive .
Skydrive can also be onedrive.
Now check it for "big" files. The "problem" is that even you are not online you still will see pictures but that are actual thumbnails so small size (about 30-50 kb)
You could sort the files on size to find the big ones. Or tap on them to check the properties.
And specially check video's because these occupy al lot of memory.

Hope you still can get some space back on this way.

Edit
If you use the local account use the desktop mode to shows the files attributes and check for "offline or online"

 

[Harrie-S]

check your "C:\Users\AppData\Local\Packages\windows_ie_ac_001\AC" folder. If it's like my sons its chewing up about 10GB's of space and I have no idea why or how to clear it. Any ideas?

​Just spent a while chatting with support which ended with reset the device using your recovery thumb drive. First they suggested to move the recovery partition, which I did years ago, then they suggested searching for windows.old, nothing there. So the end result is to reset using recovery media. At least all the data is on onedrive on an external Sd card so nothing gets lost. Anyone else have any other solutions?

Did you already do the following.
Under properties of C:/
Disk clean up
Include system files.
The checking will take some time.
And it will give the amount it could "clean"
But not all the boxes are check marked.
Check them and try to find the 10G
Maybe it is "memory dump after system crash" or some thing like this.
Basically you can mark every box.
If you find the 10Gb mark the box and ""clean"

If this does not give the result you always can reinstall the OS with the tumb drive.

 

[fpostrow]

Good idea but that was the first thing I did, including system files. No luck.

 

[Gamely Lounges]

Every once in a while my surface 2 runs low on disk. My best solution is to nuke it and start over from scratch. It's really not hard. Kick it if before you go to bed. The latest round seemed to really give me a performance boost, as running low on disk space causes some really strange behavior.

 

[Nickkk101]

Actual what you now "only" did is uncheck the "offline mode" but they are still saved on your surface 2. What you now need to do is log off so go to your local account.
And the find the onedrive (skydrive) folder on c:/users/[your name] /skydrive .
Skydrive can also be onedrive.
Now check it for "big" files. The "problem" is that even you are not online you still will see pictures but that are actual thumbnails so small size (about 30-50 kb)
You could sort the files on size to find the big ones. Or tap on them to check the properties.
And specially check video's because these occupy al lot of memory.

Hope you still can get some space back on this way.

Edit
If you use the local account use the desktop mode to shows the files attributes and check for "offline or online"

Ah! Well I certainly found over 9gb of space that way when offline- for instance my 'SkyDrive Camera Roll' folder alone was 7gb..
I'm wary to delete them though being years of personal pics, am I being too cautious lol? Surely they are, as I assume, duplicates of the versions on OneDrive and therefore already backed up? I'd just be deleting them from the device right?

 

[Loco5150]

OneDrive for Business sync application makes files on a hidden OfficeCacheFolder, that in size equal the amount of data synced, or more!

I have spoken about this to Microsoft several times, and there is nothing they can do because "its doing it by design"

So I anyone is ODFB user and wondering what eats their free harddrive space, there it probably is.

Microsoft has some of the worst coders in their teams. It's a joke really.

 

[Nickkk101]

OneDrive for Business sync application makes files on a hidden OfficeCacheFolder, that in size equal the amount of data synced, or more!

I have spoken about this to Microsoft several times, and there is nothing they can do because "its doing it by design"

So I anyone is ODFB user and wondering what eats their free harddrive space, there it probably is.

Microsoft has some of the worst coders in their teams. It's a joke really.

I'm not sure this is related to my question though...

Any info on the previous question about deleting local file info from the device? I still don't get what is filling the damn thing up! Offline attempts to delete files have not made a significant difference- its not seemingly the 9gb I've mentioned I've found. I'm deleting only a couple hundred MB nor the several GB's that are there filling it up. Why!?

Edit: So I've resorted to copying the OneDrive files onto a 32gb USB and then deleting them off the device. I can't work out why and how I can have duplicates on the device and not only in One Drive. When I remove items from OneDrive folder 'offline' then when I reconnect to the net, those files are removed from One Drive after syncing... Why can I not separate the local files from the one drive ones? This is supposed to be easy! Wtf is cloud storage then If it just fill the device with duplicates? Please correct me on this I'm going nuts here lol
FYI, the size on disk for my 'camera roll' for instance is 5gb but the folder is sitting at around 12 GB when I look at the properties. I just want my files on OneDrive to be viewable on the device, I don't want them ON the device!! Can some kind soul take me through this please? am I doing OneDrive wrong?

 

[wp_rt]

Some time ago I noticed that the Bing News app (now just News, I think) was saving articles to my HD and never removing them. It was a nice app but it had to go.

 

[Nickkk101]

Some time ago I noticed that the Bing News app (now just News, I think) was saving articles to my HD and never removing them. It was a nice app but it had to go.

Curiously, that app is indeed sitting at 200mb or so. Never understood why it was so big..

 

[Silence#WP]

I had the exact same issue on my Surface RT, and when trying to delete the items from my Surface I accidentally deleted them on OneDrive too. Thankfully OneDrive just moved these items to a trashcan and I was able to restore everything. This must be user error on my part. I thought I found the settings for storing items in the cloud only and not locally, but it didn't remove the items that were already on my Surface. I did end up nuking the thing and starting over from scratch, but updating the Surface took for ever. Generally, I find the Surface RT unusable even for just web surfing and email. It is just too slow at everything. The new Surface 3 looks interesting. If MS offers any kind of a trade in deal...

 

[fpostrow]

It's not OneDrive. I have all OneDrive and assorted libraries stored on a 64GB microSD card but still the C drive free space is goofed up on the Surface 2. If you don't know how to move your library settings it's been covered many times on this site and Thurrot.com . I also have the same settings on my S1 RT and have about 6.45GB free consistently. This may be a problem unique to the S2 though until I get more time to play around with it I won't know. When my son returns with his in May I'll nuke it and reset the OneDrive and see if the same problem persists. Hope this helps.

 

[John Steffes]

I have the Original Surface RT 64G, the best way I have made space was to delete unused apps/games not used, the next best way was to compress some of the files/folders... Like under Windows\SoftwareDistribution, this is where all windows updates go, I have also done a lot of other folder's and files...

You can compress the entire c: drive as well, but while you get disk space back, you take a hit on performance, but I was at about 4G free, now with just a few selected folders I claimed back about 3G, so I now have ~7G free out of 64G, if I eat the 3G, I will find other files/folders to compress...

There used to be a formula on Microsoft web site, but I could not find it but on average you get about 1.5% compression if you compress the entire drive so if you have a 32G surface you would end up with about 48G usable, and with 64G surface you will end up with about 96G usable, this is about the only way I have found to make space.