[SOLVED] 40 gb of unknown storage

[Andriesu Xred]

Hi i noticed that my C drive has 40 gb of used unknown storage and i don't know how to get rid of it. TreeSize can't locate it but WinDirStat can see it.

https://imgur.com/a/tWM9msP

View: https://imgur.com/a/tWM9msP

Hope someone can help

 

[Lutfij]

You might want to open up Disk Manager and see how your partitions are organised. You should also use EASEUS to see what the partition structure is as well.

 

[USAFRet]

You mean the big grey space, or the big yellow space?

 

[Andriesu Xred]

You mean the big grey space, or the big yellow space?

Big yellow square

 

[USAFRet]

Big yellow square

Single click on that square, and at far bottom left, it will give you clues of what and where.

It seems to be a .msi of something?

 

[Andriesu Xred]

You might want to open up Disk Manager and see how your partitions are organised. You should also use EASEUS to see what the partition structure is as well.

here is a screenshot if this helps

https://imgur.com/a/rft3LzR

View: https://imgur.com/a/rft3LzR

 

[Andriesu Xred]

Single click on that square, and at far bottom left, it will give you clues of what and where.

It seems to be a .msi of something?

It just says C: and nothing else

 

[SkyNetRising]

Run chkdisk (may require to reboot your pc) :

chkdsk C: /F​

 

[Andriesu Xred]

Run chkdisk (may require to reboot your pc) :

chkdsk C: /F​

I tried that 3 times to no avail

 

[SkyNetRising]

You have to run it from elevated command prompt.
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2790-open-elevated-command-prompt-windows-10-a.html

 

[Andriesu Xred]

You have to run it from elevated command prompt.
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2790-open-elevated-command-prompt-windows-10-a.html

I Tried it

 

[SkyNetRising]

And? Can you show the result?
Did you reboot your pc?

Chkdsk report can be found in Windows Event Viewer.

 

[Andriesu Xred]

And? Can you show the result?
Did you reboot your pc?

Yes, i did reboot and no, nothing changed. The files seems to keep growing for some reason. It's not fast only like 500 mb a day.

 

[USAFRet]

Please run WInDirStat again, and provide a screenshot that shows all the columns in the top right pane.

 

[Andriesu Xred]

Please run WInDirStat again, and provide a screenshot that shows all the columns in the top right pane.

https://imgur.com/a/36oOq3m

View: https://imgur.com/a/36oOq3m

hope this helps

 

[USAFRet]

Turns out, I have that same thing.

In WinDirStat - Options, Show Unknown was OFF in mine.
Turn it on, and that same <Unknown> thing appears.
Here, the yellow thing at bottom left. Mine is only 12.6GB.

However, a subsequent run of WDS does NOT show it.

Notice the 'size' of data on the C drive (circled in red) does not change by 12.6GB up or down.


From an older post at WDS:

What is “<Unknown>”? | WinDirStat propaganda blog

blog.windirstat.net

What is “<Unknown>”?

"This mysterious item is just the difference between what Windows reports as the free space on the volume minus size of the files WDS can access. Please note the part WDS can access! This is the important point here. WDS cannot access the files under System Volume Information on all the (NTFS?) drives, so it cannot sum up the sizes of these items. And by the way, we have had reports of up to 30 GB of “<Unknown>” space. "

 

[Andriesu Xred]

Turns out, I have that same thing.

In WinDirStat - Options, Show Unknown was OFF in mine.
Turn it on, and that same <Unknown> thing appears.
Here, the yellow thing at bottom left. Mine is only 12.6GB.

However, a subsequent run of WDS does NOT show it.

Notice the 'size' of data on the C drive (circled in red) does not change by 12.6GB up or down.


From an older post at WDS:

What is “<Unknown>”? | WinDirStat propaganda blog

blog.windirstat.net

What is “<Unknown>”?

"This mysterious item is just the difference between what Windows reports as the free space on the volume minus size of the files WDS can access. Please note the part WDS can access! This is the important point here. WDS cannot access the files under System Volume Information on all the (NTFS?) drives, so it cannot sum up the sizes of these items. And by the way, we have had reports of up to 30 GB of “<Unknown>” space. "

Soo can i remove it or is it necessary for windows. Highlighting all the folders in C drive says 80 gb used out of 200gb. Yet i still have only about 80 gb of free space. My other drives have this unknown thing but it's small at 800mb-1gb each. I read online that the 40gb might be restore points which would make sense since i create a lot of restore points for my C drive bur very rarely for the other 2

 

[USAFRet]

Soo can i remove it or is it necessary for windows. Highlighting all the folders in C drive says 80 gb used out of 200gb. Yet i still have only about 80 gb of free space.

It's not something you can "remove".
System files, logs, restore points.

And selecting "all the folders in C drive " is NOT the totality of what is on there.
There are some things hidden from normal view.

 

[Andriesu Xred]

It's not something you can "remove".
System files, logs, restore points.

And selecting "all the folders in C drive " is NOT the totality of what is on there.
There are some things hidden from normal view.

Can i at least mitigate the space used?

 

[USAFRet]

Can i at least mitigate the space used?

What are your System Restore Point and pagefile settings?
Is hibernation on or off?
What size is the overall drive (or partition)

 

[Andriesu Xred]

What are your System Restore Point and pagefile settings?
Is hibernation on or off?
What size is the overall drive (or partition)

Pagefile was set to another drive and i just removed it to be sure.
Deleting system restore points shrinked the unknown by about 1.5gb
the partition is 200gb in size and my pc is set to shutdown on power button and sleep on sleep button. Can't find anything about hibernation

 

[USAFRet]

hibernation:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...ble-hibernation-on-a-computer-that-is-running

 

[Andriesu Xred]

hibernation:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...ble-hibernation-on-a-computer-that-is-running

hibernations is turned off and i have no Hiberfil.sys on py PC

 

[USAFRet]

hibernations is turned off and i have no Hiberfil.sys on py PC

Reboot and run WinDirStat again.

Your previous "Deleting system restore points shrinked the unknown by about 1.5gb " indicates that <Unknown> is actual stuff, just that WinDirStat does not know what it is.

 

[Andriesu Xred]

Reboot and run WinDirStat again.

Your previous "Deleting system restore points shrinked the unknown by about 1.5gb " indicates that <Unknown> is actual stuff, just that WinDirStat does not know what it is.

it went back to 41.5 gb.....