I've done the tweaks, but I'm STILL losing space on my SSD!

[tcho]

Hi everyone,

I know this gets asked a lot, but why do I keep losing space on my SSD on a nearly daily basis? (I've done most of the OS tweaks and stopped automatic updates.)

Here's what I've noticed in the past few days. First, I installed an 80mb Microsoft update and went from 76.5 to 76.4 on my OS drive. Nothing surprising there. Then, a day later, after using CCleaner, I noticed that my free space was only at 76.1 gb. I know it's a small amount, but I have no idea where it's going, and this happens quite often. The only thing I can guess are a few fonts that installed. Could this be it? The only reason I ruled this out was because the combined file sizes for the fonts weren't anywhere near the 300mb I lost. But what else can it be?

If someone can shed some light on this, I would MUCH appreciate it.

Tom

 

[USAFRet]

Monitor it over a week or two.
300MB up or down in one day is pretty meaningless.

Temp folder can easily vary that much. Visiting a few sites with a couple of largish images could do that.

 

[mesab66]

If your SSD is your only drive then you are going to notice apparently unexplained ups and downs in useage. These should be relatively minor and reflect Windows doing its thing.
Of course there are other reasons such as silent or automatic updating for various running background programs, including anti virus, etc.

You might want to check each of these to see you are happy with their default behaviour - most can be changed, though you will want to ensure important things are enabled and/or updated asap.

Since you have CCleaner - a good free utility to have - do you also delete your excess restore points? .....a very significant saving in space can be made here.

If your SSD is your only drive you might want to consider adding an HDD (if this is possible....this is not a laptop?). If you can do this then a considerable burden can be offloaded from the SSD.

 

[Hawkeye22]

If you have system restore enabled on that drive, restore points will also take up space. You can either disable it on that drive or change the amount of disk space is used by restore points.

 

[tcho]

Hi guys,

I have restore points turned off and just create system images to an external drive. Haven't turned off Pagefile (set to 2gb), indexing, or defrag yet, but I will tonight. I'll look into the silent updates too. I have a 120 gb ssd for the OS drive, a 60 gb drive for games, and 1 TB drive for storage.

I wouldn't worry so much about a random 300mb up or down, but it's never up (unless I use CCleaner) and it's always down. I would say an average of about 300-600mb per week that I don't know how to get back (and this is keeping in mind anything I might have installed that week).

I'm going to try to uninstall the fonts (stored on my HDD but installed on the OS drive) and see if that might be it (doubtful).

If anyone else has any other thoughts, I'm all ears!

 

[USAFRet]

ooo...Turn off defrag! Not needed on an SSD!

 

[tcho]

Also keep in mind that the slow and eventual loss of space is not something I've fully come to terms with yet. I know Windows gets larger over time, but if someone can put this into context for me I'd love to know more about this.

Thanks!

 

[tcho]

Hey USAFret

Will do! Is that one of those things like restore points that bloats over time?

 

[USAFRet]

Hey USAFret

Will do! Is that one of those things like restore points that bloats over time?

No, this is one of the things that will kill the overall lifespan over time.

 

[tcho]

If your SSD is your only drive then you are going to notice apparently unexplained ups and downs in useage. These should be relatively minor and reflect Windows doing its thing.
Of course there are other reasons such as silent or automatic updating for various running background programs, including anti virus, etc.

You might want to check each of these to see you are happy with their default behaviour - most can be changed, though you will want to ensure important things are enabled and/or updated asap.

Since you have CCleaner - a good free utility to have - do you also delete your excess restore points? .....a very significant saving in space can be made here.

If your SSD is your only drive you might want to consider adding an HDD (if this is possible....this is not a laptop?). If you can do this then a considerable burden can be offloaded from the SSD.

Hey Mesa,

I'm leaning toward this as the likely culprit. Where can I change these?

 

[mesab66]

Have a look into Googling 'optimising an SSD with windows 7".

You'll gain invaluable info here - the vast majority should say pretty much the same things (check a few links) and cover in detail exactly what the other folk above have been saying e.g. defrag and indexing.

W7 is supposed to automatically set up an SSD much better than in previous Windows versions, however, you'll want to check this and examine whether there are other things you can do - hence a wee bit of Googling - they do a more comprehensive job than what we can do in a short reply and offer a nice way to pick up a few tips (make sure you confirm the details using >1 link).

As an example of non-OS programs needlessly using up space if you have an NVidia card you'll see a folder at C:\NVIDIA that contains not only the latest driver update but many older ones. These can safely be deleted (they are installer files not needed once the update is completed).
A program like Treesize can be used to monitor file and folder sizes in any drive so that you can see what is taking up space. This then allows you to easily remove things you know about and research others you don't. A very handy tool.

As mentioned above, the OS itself will gain weight on its own as time goes on. Regular use of tools like CCleaner will help trim some of this excess fat.

 

[James Forrest]

I've noticed that Windows 7 / Server 2k8R2 are both growers (winsxs). I had VMs with 20GB OS drives which were perfectly adequate 2 years ago, but now I wouldn't even think about anything less than 40GB