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I have an SSD with ~125GB formatted, and it claims ~99GB are consumed. It has been rapidly consuming storage space for weeks. I have found many instances of unexplained SSD consumption online, none of which seemed to have my answer. SSD Data Loss Over Time

My user's directory has been properly moved to another HDD with a junction so that none of my normal data storage is done on the SSD. Windows and Program Files are still present.

However, the strange thing is that I only have 46GB of data on the drive as confirmed by directory tree listings and Total Commander viewing hidden and system files. Display with Hidden Files

WinDirStat, manual inspection, and any other storage consumption analysis tool report 46GB of data on the drive when launched from a copy of Windows running on the SSD. Storage Analysis This is a big discrepancy from the ~99GB consumed. Where is all my free space?

Kevin Panko
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user1695505
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  • This is really not a question but an explanation of something I didn't find explained elsewhere before finding the answer myself. Please tell me if this doesn't belong here. – user1695505 May 20 '15 at 09:54
  • possible duplicate of [How can I visualize the file system usage on Windows?](http://superuser.com/questions/8248/how-can-i-visualize-the-file-system-usage-on-windows) – Karan May 20 '15 at 09:54
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    @user1695505 Format it as a question then add the solution as an answer. Also add "answered" or "solved" to the title and accept your own answer. Then it is clear. – Ctrl-alt-dlt May 20 '15 at 09:55
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    You need to run WinDirStat as admin so it finds everything. Also, as you've noted this is not a question at all. You could break this up into a question and an answer, but there are *lots* of duplicates on this very site and so it would get closed anyway. @JamieWilletts: No point really. – Karan May 20 '15 at 09:56
  • @Jamie Willetts - thank you, will do immediately. – user1695505 May 20 '15 at 09:56
  • @karan, this is not a duplicate nor a thread about using WinDirStat. This is a thread concerning free space that is consumed without apparent explanation while Windows is running from the drive. WinDirStat does not see the culprit folder at all when Windows is running from that drive, not even as admin. – user1695505 May 20 '15 at 10:06
  • Then one of the other tools listed in answers to that question will certainly find it. Also there are other questions dealing with the same system restore 'lost' data issue as well. – Karan May 20 '15 at 10:11
  • In my searches I did not find a clear answer to this problem, I found lots of similar problems with different answers. The folder in question is inaccessible while Windows is running, only something running at boot would be able to analyze the size of the folder in question. Moderators may feel free to remove this thread if they deem it a duplicate. – user1695505 May 20 '15 at 10:16
  • I was able to look at your intial scan and tell right away what was consuming your storage space. I was also going to point out you didn't run it with esclated privilages. – Ramhound May 20 '15 at 10:50
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    @JamieWilletts: [Please do **not** ask people to add "answered" or "solved" to the title.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/116101/is-it-ok-to-add-solved-to-the-title-of-a-question) This is not a forum. – Karan May 20 '15 at 17:21
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    @JamieWilletts: The way to do that on SU is to accept your own answer (need to wait 2 days after the question was asked to do that). – fixer1234 May 21 '15 at 04:08

4 Answers4

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If you did not run WinDirStat as admin, it would only be able to report on space used by files that it is allowed to see.

Run it again as administrator, and it should start showing you the total picture of where the space has gone.

Kevin Panko
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  • I tested it with admin and without with a folder with a hidden folder inside, with a hidden file inside, it displayed the total size including hidden files without and with admin privileges. – Santropedro Nov 28 '18 at 23:16
  • This helped me troubleshoot a users PC. Without running as admin it showed the hard drive using 50 GB when it was in fact using 45 GB. The culprit files were MSSQL files. – leeman24 Oct 07 '20 at 18:42
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    Even running as an admin isn't enough, you'd need to run as `LocalSystem`. I once had a build agent running as `LocalSystem` which cached data in `C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local` which WinDirStat couldn't see. See https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/6tm8aw/psa_always_run_tools_like_windirstat_as_local/ – Chris Oldwood Sep 09 '22 at 10:05
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So what is taking up all this space? System restore. I was able to determine this by loading the drive through another computer and viewing hidden/system files.

In my case System Restore was currently configured to consume 50% of the storage space of the drive, thus this massive System Volume Information folder. To reconfigure, [Right Click]Computer --> Properties --> System Protection (on right) --> Configure Culprit

user1695505
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  • This is the thread's official answer and will be accepted in 2 days time when allowed. – user1695505 May 20 '15 at 10:03
  • This is a "question," not a "thread." Threads have "discussions" with "replies" but questions just have "answers." Check out this question: [Is Stack Overflow a forum?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/92107/is-stack-overflow-a-forum) – Kevin Panko May 21 '15 at 14:35
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    @user1695505, I work for Microsoft and by a popular opinion should therefore know how Windows works. Well, this question saved my day anyways :D Could you please already select it as accepted, even though the 2 days passed almost 5 years ago? – Danek Mar 07 '20 at 10:23
  • This is the way. I had 43GB+ of space being stolen by System Protection and the Protection was turned off! – Patrick Oct 29 '22 at 18:22
  • This is the answer I was looking for, for 2 years. 50% of my disk's storage was occupied and I couldn't find how. Thank you. – Chris K May 16 '23 at 09:43
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Running WinDirStat as any admin may not help in certain cases, in my case for files which were created by aborted XBox game pass downloads. These will only be seen by WinDirStat if it is started from the (built in in Windows but usually disabled) Administrator account.

Reiner Zorn
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In my case, the drive is in exFAT format where the files may use much more space than their actual size. The missing free space is at the end of the big disk blocks for many small files.

Windows reports that the disk almost full: 6.14 GB free of 119 GB

WinDirStat reports that only 16.8 GB is used for the whole disk.

Windows directory properties show both the sum of file sizes (3.07GB) and the disk usage (16.5GB) for one of the directories. WinDirStat reports 3.1GB for this directory.

The unix du (disk usage) utility (in MINGW64, Git Bash in my case) shows the real disk usage including the empty space at the end of files: output of the "du -sh" command, 17 GB for the directory in question.

Jozsef Frigo
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