# help missing disk space



## keakar (Feb 8, 2015)

or I guess its more accurate to say I have unused yet unavailable disk space

help, my 500gb ssd disk shows windows has 100mb efi system information partition saved storage with 465gb main partition.

the problem is it is showing roughly around 150gb of drive space is filled and unavailable that has nothing installed on it.  I have on it (windows and a few small games) yet windows shows that I only have 217gb space left on the drive, so assuming 10gb for system restore, where the hell is the other 150gb that is showing up as used an unavailable?

the whole volume is being seen as available by windows, its just windows is showing 150gb of unused disk space as used for some reason.

this is a new install after reformat and reinstall so I am sure its not virus or worm related issues and I am sure the disk was showing used space correctly before I did the reinstall. I do know it always showed less then half full and now shows more then half full.

what the heck is going on? can this be fixed or do I have to reformat again and do another reinstall?


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## newtekie1 (Feb 8, 2015)

Download TreeSize Free and run it on the drive.

http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

I bet some of it is going to a Hyberfile(which is almost always the same size as the amount of RAM installed in the computer) and another big chuck is probably going to the Page File.  Both are hidden system files so they won't show up unless you specifically enable the option to see them in explorer.  But TreeSize will see them as well as anything else that is hidden.


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## keakar (Feb 8, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> Download TreeSize Free and run it on the drive.
> 
> http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/
> 
> I bet some of it is going to a Hyberfile(which is almost always the same size as the amount of RAM installed in the computer) and another big chuck is probably going to the Page File.  Both are hidden system files so they won't show up unless you specifically enable the option to see them in explorer.  But TreeSize will see them as well as anything else that is hidden.




that website no longer works, the downloads don't work

what is hyberfile and page file files used for and where can I find them and can I just delete the file found there? im not so much interested in seeing where a big chunk of data is as to why its there and how I can get my disk space back from it, I want my 150gb back! at this rate I cant even install my other games or windows will crash from limited drive space.

is this a windows setting out of whack? can I just rest windows settings to defaults and how would I do this?


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## CrackerJack (Feb 8, 2015)

Link works fine here...

Hibernation File

Page File


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## Steevo (Feb 8, 2015)

Make sure you are cleaning up old system restore points.


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## newtekie1 (Feb 8, 2015)

keakar said:


> that website no longer works, the downloads don't work



Downloads work fine here.  The direct link to the download is this: http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/TreeSizeFree.zip



keakar said:


> what is hyberfile and page file files used for and where can I find them and can I just delete the file found there?



No you can't just delete the Hiberfile and Page File.  Windows will just recreate them, and actually probably won't let you delete them.  You have to disable Hibernation and move your page file to another drive(or just make it very small).

To disable hibernation:

Click *Start*, and then type cmd in the *Start Search* box.
In the search results list, right-click *Command Prompt*, and then click *Run as Administrator*.
When you are prompted by User Account Control, click *Continue*.
At the command prompt, type powercfg.exe /hibernate off, and then press Enter.
Type exit, and then press Enter to close the Command Prompt window.
Once you disable hibernation it will delete the hiberfile.sys file for you.

To change the size of the page file:


Open System in Control Panel.
On the *Advanced* tab, under *Performance*, click *Settings*.
On the* Advanced* tab, under *Virtual memory*, click *Change*.
Under *Drive [Volume Label]*, click the drive that contains the paging file you want to change.
Under *Paging file size for selected drive*, click *Custom size*, and type a new paging file size in megabytes in the *Initial size (MB)* or *Maximum size (MB)* box, and then click *Set*.
I prefer to set the Initial and Maximum size to the same size.  I usually just set it to 2048MB.  It will take 2GB of space.  2GB of space used shouldn't make a difference.


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## keakar (Feb 8, 2015)

ok guys thanks, I guess its my internet then and not the link, internets been buggy all weekend going in and out.


it was windows recommended to be 12gb but I had it set to 8gb virtual memory set for all drives so I reset it to 2gb like you suggested but im missing 150gb so a handful of gb here and there isn't solving this thing but I do appreciate the help and it is doing good to fix these settings





Steevo said:


> Make sure you are cleaning up old system restore points.


I think this was it.

it was default set to use up to 50% of disk space so that was it. I reset it to only use 5% and now I have 465gb with 316 gb free which is more like it.


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## cheesy999 (Feb 8, 2015)

keakar said:


> ok guys thanks, I guess its my internet then and not the link, internets been buggy all weekend going in and out.
> 
> 
> it was recommended to be 12gb but I had it set to 8gb virtual memory set for all drives so I reset it to 2gb like you suggested but im missing 150gb so a handful of gb here and there isn't solving this thing but I do appreciate the help and it is doing good to fix these settings
> ...




It's system restore points and indexing information


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## keakar (Feb 8, 2015)

cheesy999 said:


> It's system restore points and indexing information



yes that was it, I just edited out most of what you quoted as you were posting it, lol.

its crazy how windows is set at default to use up to half of your drive for restore points so im guessing it must have had 50 or more restore points in there and once I reset it to only use 5% of the drive I got back a good 130gb of drive space from the deleted restore points it had.

I am still showing 7 restore points so that looks like more then enough if there is an issue, I think IIRC win xp only used 3-5% or something like that


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## keakar (Mar 8, 2015)

ok I had my computer nice and cleaned up and thought I was done with this problem but next thing you know I see my free disk space is at bare minimum and the used disk space is full again when I didn't add anything to the computer except adding around 3gb of old 2005 games like original first version COD to it. now im back with 135 gb of disk space missing again.

I have a 500gb ssd drive that shows 419gb available with 155gb free space left yet as you see by the list below I only have 135gb of stuff I put on the computer in data and software yet there is a huge 135gb of system volume that should not be there. this system volume  file needs to go so where the hell did it come from and how do I get rid of it? windows is wanting to shut down some of windows features because my computer is running slow due to limited disk space.

I ran the "treesize" utility and it says this:

134.3gb system volume  <<<<<<<<<<<<< this is the problem
68.3gb users
24.4gb program files x86
20.9gb windows
13.9gb (3 files) - (11.9gb hiberfile, 2.0gb pagefile, 4.0kb ststag.bin)
2.7gb games
1.5gb program files
1.2gb programdata
163.6 recovery
16.8mb recycle bin

I never had so much freakin trouble withwindows setting fire to any remaining unused disk space like this.

*and here is the strangest part*, I had 158gb of free disk space so I ran disk cleanup and told it to cleanup system files and after it did that I only had 155gb free space so I LOST 3gb of space by cleaning up the system files!!!!!!!!!!!!

*also I rechecked system restore and it was still set at 5% so I turned it off completely* and it made no difference in free disk space.

why the hell is my computer doing this and how the hell do I destroy whatever is doing it, I mean nuke it forever so I don't end up back with this problem again?

after everything we discussed earlier in the thread I did a fresh format and brand new install then made sure all the points we discussed were covered and I had 112gb used space on the disk with right at or just below 300gb free space left so I made a complete backup of the system and stored it on a secondary drive. I figured it would stay like that as long as I left everything alone which I did but its all gone now once again.

so sure, I can just restore the computer with the system backup utility to go back to 112gb  on the drive again like it was last week but in another week I am just going to have this very same issue again if I cant kill whatever is storing massive gb of data for no reason and using up all my drive space.

I have a 500gb drive and nothing but a few excel and word documents on it and a handful of outdated games yet my computer has no disk space left for windows to even function properly


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## Mussels (Mar 8, 2015)

windows can leave 'shadow copy' files all over the damn place. you can google for guides to clean them up, i had a 1TB storage drive i left disconnected most of the time, and had over 100GB in the shadow copy somehow.


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## natr0n (Mar 8, 2015)

ccleaner and or privazer


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## keakar (Mar 8, 2015)

Mussels said:


> windows can leave 'shadow copy' files all over the damn place. you can google for guides to clean them up, i had a 1TB storage drive i left disconnected most of the time, and had over 100GB in the shadow copy somehow.



ok thanks, I got rid of the shadow copies and my free space is back to 285gb now, but how do I make sure these shadow copies don't come back and consume the whole drive again? I mean I thought by setting system restore to only use 5% of disk space that I was also setting the shadow copy volume size to that as well. 

shouldn't the shadow copies be limited to that same size? I thought that's how it works?


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## Mussels (Mar 8, 2015)

keakar said:


> ok thanks, I got rid of the shadow copies and my free space is back to 285gb now, but how do I make sure these shadow copies don't come back and consume the whole drive again? I mean I thought by setting system restore to only use 5% of disk space that I was also setting the shadow copy volume size to that as well.
> 
> shouldn't the shadow copies be limited to that same size? I thought that's how it works?




i dont think shadow copies care how they're meant to work, as mentioned above i've had them go weird on me when they shouldnt have. just one of those things you have to clear up every now and then.


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## Ebo (Mar 8, 2015)

On my old Samsung 830 SSD and use magician software, you could bypass that just with a single click in the software.


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## Pehla (Mar 8, 2015)

i have never had problem like that!! i have 128gb ssd and half of it is full,but only becouse i have two large games on it !!
im sticking around just to see what the problem is..


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## Devon68 (Mar 8, 2015)

Try CCCleaner it might help if not just delete it.


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## keakar (Mar 8, 2015)

Mussels said:


> i dont think shadow copies care how they're meant to work, as mentioned above i've had them go weird on me when they shouldnt have. just one of those things you have to clear up every now and then.




ok, so your saying even though I reduced system restore down to nothing and then even turned it off, those stored files are different then the shadow files and these shadow files, while they are "supposed" to mimick the size of the system restore files, they can sometimes go wonky and grow as big as they want no matter what SR is set to?



Ebo said:


> On my old Samsung 830 SSD and use magician software, you could bypass that just with a single click in the software.


 I have the 840 and magician is installed, do I have this too? if so how do I use it?



natr0n said:


> ccleaner and or privazer





Devon68 said:


> Try CCCleaner it might help if not just delete it.



thanks guys but I already tried regular cleanup tools and I use ccleaner every day but these files are protected or something so regular cleanup utilities dont remove them


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## keakar (Mar 8, 2015)

YES! I found it

*ok here is how to perminantly fix this issue:*

look here for the solution but in it there is an error in the fix - http://www.fots.nl/index.php/how-to-reclaim-storage-from-system-volume-information/

when he says in his example to open cmd prompt as administrator and just type in:
"*vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=c: /for=c: /maxsize=5GB*"
(this entry will fail because it cant be recognized as valid because the system only recognizes the command in terms of % and not a GB)

number so enter it like this example:

"*vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=c: /for=c: /maxsize=5%*"
(which in my case is the system restore size setting I chose, they need to be the same to prevent these random huge storage issues)

so to make it easy just copy and paste this: *vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=c: /for=c: /maxsize=*
(and just add the percentage you want to use on the end which is normally the same size as the average system restore size setting)

when you read what this stuff does you can see you don't want to shrink it too small so I rather have too much then not enough allocated there so 5% for me is 15GB. I can easily spare 15GB but the thing was set on mine to a maximum size of 225gb even though system restore is set to 15GBwhich was my issue. it appears this setting "follows" system restore size but is not bound by the system restore size settings


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## Mussels (Mar 9, 2015)

keakar said:


> ok, so your saying even though I reduced system restore down to nothing and then even turned it off, those stored files are different then the shadow files and these shadow files, while they are "supposed" to mimick the size of the system restore files, they can sometimes go wonky and grow as big as they want no matter what SR is set to?



exactly. in my case being a removable drive, i guess it wasnt attached to the system when the cleanup was meant to occur - so it never got done.


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## qubit (Mar 9, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> Download TreeSize Free and run it on the drive.
> 
> http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/


Hey, nice utility. 

I've got this similar one (free) which works in a more graphical way and is seriously useful when trying to find the biggest files on a volume.

http://windirstat.info

By the looks of it, these two utilities complement each other rather than compete. Getting TreeSize now.


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