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I'm baffled. My C: Drive is showing up as almost full at 127GB out of a 138GB hard drive capacity. However, when I add up all the folders, they only add up to 73GB.

That's a whole whopping 54GB that's been eaten up by something I don't know about. I understand that temporary files can eat up space, but not 54GB, right? Where did the space go?

I've searched Google for solutions and a common culprit seems to be Adobe Media Cache files, but I don't seem to have a folder like this.

How do I figure out where the space has gone and free it up?

Oliver Salzburg
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    What @Shahzeb said, but: if you click start and type "disk cleanup", this may help reclaim some of your space. – Dan Puzey Jul 31 '12 at 07:17
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    System Restore doesn't show up used space when you tally the folders, due to permissions. Use an app like SequoiaView to establish exactly where it all went. –  Jul 31 '12 at 08:15
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    Perform a *chkdsk* (Properties / Tools / Error checking), and note the number of clusters-in-use and bad blocks. If any lost clusters were recovered, then add up your sizes again. Are you sure you are counting **hidden** files and folders? @RandolphWest - the disk space used by System Restore files should be constrained to just a few percent of total space, unless that limit was mucked with. – sawdust Jul 31 '12 at 08:38
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    Agreed. 12% is the default. There's also a long list of files that won't be counted, depending on permissions. OP hasn't indicated whether she looked for system files like hiberfil.sys and page file, so we are guessing anyway. –  Jul 31 '12 at 08:41
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    The disk drive doesn't just contain files, even if you were sure they were all being counted including hidden, system restore, etc. It contains reserved space for directory information, often 8-20% of the drive space (depending on file system). Then, files are written in blocks so the file size in bytes doesn't tell exactly how much of the disk is used. Then, disk size is rounded based on underlying binary -- e.g. 100GB is 107374182400 bytes. There is more, but that should give you enough reasons why you can't add filesizes to see exact space used. – Debra Feb 16 '19 at 22:59
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    For an overview of the MFT (which holds information about each & every file on the disk, even those deleted) see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/174619/how-ntfs-reserves-space-for-its-master-file-table-mft which also mentions the pagefile (aka swap file aka virtual memory) which also consume space but don't count as "files". And let's not forget the "recycle bin" in Windows. And if Hibernate is enabled, that's another piece. I'm sure I'm missing something, but this should give some idea of why it's not just all files & folders. – Debra Feb 16 '19 at 23:03

3 Answers3

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Windows typically reserves some space for swapping, and also for system restore. Go to system properties (e.g. right click "my computer") and check virtual memory under Advanced->Performance settings, and system restore space under the System restore tab.

Rune Aamodt
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Maybe, you added up all folders, excluding those that are hidden or system? Enable the viewing of hidden folders Control Panel->Appearance and Personalization->Hidden files and folders->Remove the checkmark from the checkbox labeled Hide protected operating system files-> Press OK.

westwood
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Use an utility like foldersize to get detailed count of your disk usage

Steve
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