Question 653GB of storage missing?

[Shrikefire]

I have a Silicon Power 1TB SSD. I recently did a clean install of windows 11 on my PC. The Windows.old file was something like 550GB and I only had about 10GB of storage left on my PC so I wanted to clean up some space. I made a backup of the Windows.old file on and external drive and deleted the original file from my PC. After this however I still had almost no storage left (still about 10GB remaining) . My computer says I should have 953GB of available storage after necessary windows files but both TreeSize and WinDirStat (I ran both with and without admin permission) say I only have about 300GB of available storage on my drive.
Here are some images to show my issue:

https://imgur.com/a/bVFnM8f

View: https://imgur.com/a/bVFnM8f

I am not very good with technology so I am not sure if this just has something to do with the clean install of windows or something else. From what I can understand Is that out of my 953GB of available storage I only have access/influence over 300GB meaning I have approximately 653GB of storage used that I cannot delete/remove/or use. I would obviously love to have some, if not all of that storage back so I can use it for games, programs, recordings, etc, or at least just understand what is going on.

 

[Misgar]

When you delete a file in Windows, it goes into the Recycle Bin (unless you hold down the Shift key) where it continues to take up space on the drive.

This space only becomes free when you delete the file from the Recycle Bin. It's a two-stage process, in case you decide to recover a file deleted by mistake.

The Recycle BIn only has a finite capacity and I'm surprised there was enough room to hold a 550GB Windows Old file.

If you have backed up the Windows.old file, open the Recycle Bin, select 'Recycle Bin Tools' and judiciously delete anything you don't need, to free up space.

 

[sonofjesse]

You need to open up Disk Management and post a screenshot. . I assume the 653GB you didn't format..... Disk management will show you the way

Also it could be just the old install/file/docs it saved and it will be a separate folder, You can delete it if your data is bakcedup etc

 

[Shrikefire]

You need to open up Disk Management and post a screenshot. . I assume the 653GB you didn't format..... Disk management will show you the way

Also it could be just the old install/file/docs it saved and it will be a separate folder, You can delete it if your data is bakcedup etc

I'm not sure if it shows on your end but I posted a group of 6 photos, the second of which is my Disk Management. It show 3 items.
1: Healthy (EFI system partition) at 100MB
2: My C: drive at 953.13 GB
3: Healthy (recovery partition) at 637MB
All of those are marked with blue, and I have no partitions marked in black to indicate unallocated storage.
Here is an image anyway of my Disk Management:

https://imgur.com/a/DCYSPSV

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


If my old install still is on my computer and saved to another folder, do you have an Idea of where that folder might be?

 

[Shrikefire]

When you delete a file in Windows, it goes into the Recycle Bin (unless you hold down the Shift key) where it continues to take up space on the drive.

This space only becomes free when you delete the file from the Recycle Bin. It's a two-stage process, in case you decide to recover a file deleted by mistake.

The Recycle BIn only has a finite capacity and I'm surprised there was enough room to hold a 550GB Windows Old file.

If you have backed up the Windows.old file, open the Recycle Bin, select 'Recycle Bin Tools' and judiciously delete anything you don't need, to free up space.

When I checked the recycle bin the Windows.old file wasn't in there so I wasn't sure if it actually got deleted. When I went back to my C: drive the Windows.old file was still there but in properties it shows only as 17MB and in TreeSize it shows as 1GB:

https://imgur.com/a/gbzS6zH

View: https://imgur.com/a/gbzS6zH

The only other thing I can think of is that its in some other file on my computer that I'm unaware of but that seems unlikely.

 

[Shrikefire]

I found a solution! it has been a few hours and my PC had some updates that required a restart. Upon restarting my computer I was given a prompt saying something like "scanning and repairing your drive C:" after the restart was complete I checked my C: drive and I now have 654GB of free space! For anyone with similar issues maybe try scanning for a windows update or simply restarting your PC

 

[CountMike]

I found a solution! it has been a few hours and my PC had some updates that required a restart. Upon restarting my computer I was given a prompt saying something like "scanning and repairing your drive C:" after the restart was complete I checked my C: drive and I now have 654GB of free space! For anyone with similar issues maybe try scanning for a windows update or simply restarting your PC

How did you delete windows.old ? Proper way is to use disk cleanup or from Run > cleanmgr.

 

[Shrikefire]

How did you delete windows.old ? Proper way is to use disk cleanup or from Run > cleanmgr.

Yes I used disc cleanup as administrator and deleted the “Previous Windows Installation” option