My SSD drive mysteriously lost all free space.

[atomicdumpling]

I have a 4.5 year old system with a 60GB SSD drive and a 1 TB hard drive. My SSD drive is small but has worked fine until recently. When I built the system, SSD drives were new and 60GB was the biggest available.

On my 60GB SSD drive I have Windows 7 and MS Office 2010 installed. There are only a couple of other programs on there and no documents, photos, videos etc. The drive worked great for 4 years and nothing new has been added for a long time, so it is not overloaded with files.

In recent months my free space on the SSD drive has steadily declined to the point where now there is zero space remaining. I run CCleaner and Advanced System Care 8 regularly. I also use MalwareBytes, AVG Anti-virus and Spybot Search and Destroy regularly.

I have to run the Windows Disk Cleanup Utility every day.

System Restore and hibernate are disabled.

The SSD is losing space every day even though I am not saving any files to it. There is zero SSD space and I can barely use the computer at all because of it.

What could be causing this problem? Is there anything I can do about it?

I bought a new 240GB SSD drive. I was planning to use Macrium Reflex to clone the old SSD onto the new one, but Macrium Reflex gives me an error message every time I try to download and install it. FYI, the download is set to go to my hard disk, also tried a thumb drive.

I am hoping you guys can help me out here because I am thoroughly aggravated and discouraged with this right now.

Thank you,

Nick

 

[Reyaz123]

Download and use a program called crystaldiskinfo to check your status of your drive. Post the results here because it could tell you if there are problems with your drive and/or drive failure is possible

 

[RainCaster]

Your SSD is very old, and from an early generation of drives. Good news- they are much better today. Bad news- your drive has probably gone into read-only mode as its write cycle count has been exceeded.

As for the issue in downloading Macrium, Windows will put the file into temporary space before copying it to your thumb drive. That storage space is probably on your C: drive. You are in a very crippled state, and may need to download that with a separate machine. I'm not familiar with Macrium, so I will speak generically about drive cloning. You should try to create a boot drive with your cloning s/w on it. Either thumb drive or floppy. Once you can boot your machine in this manner, you will be able to clone your 60G drive to the new SSD.

 

[SBMfromLA]

I have a 4.5 year old system with a 60GB SSD drive and a 1 TB hard drive. My SSD drive is small but has worked fine until recently. When I built the system, SSD drives were new and 60GB was the biggest available.

On my 60GB SSD drive I have Windows 7 and MS Office 2010 installed. There are only a couple of other programs on there and no documents, photos, videos etc. The drive worked great for 4 years and nothing new has been added for a long time, so it is not overloaded with files.

In recent months my free space on the SSD drive has steadily declined to the point where now there is zero space remaining. I run CCleaner and Advanced System Care 8 regularly. I also use MalwareBytes, AVG Anti-virus and Spybot Search and Destroy regularly.

I have to run the Windows Disk Cleanup Utility every day.

System Restore and hibernate are disabled.

The SSD is losing space every day even though I am not saving any files to it. There is zero SSD space and I can barely use the computer at all because of it.

What could be causing this problem? Is there anything I can do about it?

I bought a new 240GB SSD drive. I was planning to use Macrium Reflex to clone the old SSD onto the new one, but Macrium Reflex gives me an error message every time I try to download and install it. FYI, the download is set to go to my hard disk, also tried a thumb drive.

I am hoping you guys can help me out here because I am thoroughly aggravated and discouraged with this right now.

Thank you,

Nick

A while back I had a similar problem with my SSD losing free Space. I figured out what was happening after I went to Folder Options and selected the option to SHOW HIDDEN FILES. I found a rogue file that was being created by a corrupted program I was using. For some reason it kept creating an empty 50-100GB file on the root directory. Since it was a hidden folder I couldn't detect it earlier.

 

[atomicdumpling]

Your SSD is very old, and from an early generation of drives. Good news- they are much better today. Bad news- your drive has probably gone into read-only mode as its write cycle count has been exceeded.

As for the issue in downloading Macrium, Windows will put the file into temporary space before copying it to your thumb drive. That storage space is probably on your C: drive. You are in a very crippled state, and may need to download that with a separate machine. I'm not familiar with Macrium, so I will speak generically about drive cloning. You should try to create a boot drive with your cloning s/w on it. Either thumb drive or floppy. Once you can boot your machine in this manner, you will be able to clone your 60G drive to the new SSD.

What cloning software do you recommend?

I tried to install Macrium Reflect. I downloaded it using another computer onto a thumb drive. I tried to install it on the problem computer but the Macrium installer won't let me select any other drive except the C: drive, which has zero space available. So I guess I can't use Macrium. Any others I should try?

Thanks for your advice.

 

[Reyaz123]

Try Acronis true image
http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/pc-backup/

 

[SBMfromLA]

What brand of SSD are you using? The cloning will only work if you have a hardware problem. If it's a software glitch... then cloning to a new SSD won't do you any good and the problem will just continue on the new drive.

 

[atomicdumpling]

What brand of SSD are you using? The cloning will only work if you have a hardware problem. If it's a software glitch... then cloning to a new SSD won't do you any good and the problem will just continue on the new drive.

My old 60 GB SSD is made by OCZ. My new one is a 240GB from SanDisk.

Maybe I should just install the new SSD and install Windows from scratch? Will the old Windows disk/license allow me to install it on the new drive without paying for it again?

 

[Reyaz123]

If your version of Windows came with your PC, it is OEM and the license is tied to that system. As long as you don't change your entire motherboard and know the exact type of OS your pc came with, it should work

 

[SBMfromLA]

What brand of SSD are you using? The cloning will only work if you have a hardware problem. If it's a software glitch... then cloning to a new SSD won't do you any good and the problem will just continue on the new drive.

My old 60 GB SSD is made by OCZ. My new one is a 240GB from SanDisk.

Maybe I should just install the new SSD and install Windows from scratch? Will the old Windows disk/license allow me to install it on the new drive without paying for it again?

Before you do anything... why not just quickly download and install OCD SSD Guru... and let it tell you the status of the drive. And yes, you can install OEM copies of Windows onto new/upgraded drives. I've had three drives on my computer and had no problems with new reinstalls.

 

[RainCaster]

I'll respond to several questions given above.
* I like Acronis, it will create a boot disk CD or thumb drive that can do stand-alone cloning.
* The OCZ SSD Guru is a good tool- http://ocz.com/consumer/download/ssd-guru/SSDGuru_win_1.2.1351.zip
* You can download an OEM version of Acronis from any drive vendor for free, but it will be tied to the disks in your machine.
* If your 1TB HDD is a WD or Seagate drive, you can download it from them.
* Windows will let you change one thing at a time on your system without causing a big licensing kerfluffle.
* Even if Windows asks you to call in for a new license key, it's no big deal. They are very nice about it.

 

[atomicdumpling]

Latest update:

I took the old/defective SSD out of my computer and replaced it with the new, larger one. I installed Windows 7 Professional 64 bit from my disk. That went fine. Now the problem is that I can't see my 1TB hard disk, which was my F: drive. The hard disk is visible in Device Manager but it is not visible in My Computer. How can I get Windows to recognize my hard disk so I can access my files?

 

[SBMfromLA]

Latest update:

I took the old/defective SSD out of my computer and replaced it with the new, larger one. I installed Windows 7 Professional 64 bit from my disk. That went fine. Now the problem is that I can't see my 1TB hard disk, which was my F: drive. The hard disk is visible in Device Manager but it is not visible in My Computer. How can I get Windows to recognize my hard disk so I can access my files?[/quotem

Try looking for the drive from within Disk Management and double checking the drive letter.

 

[atomicdumpling]

Latest update:

I took the old/defective SSD out of my computer and replaced it with the new, larger one. I installed Windows 7 Professional 64 bit from my disk. That went fine. Now the problem is that I can't see my 1TB hard disk, which was my F: drive. The hard disk is visible in Device Manager but it is not visible in My Computer. How can I get Windows to recognize my hard disk so I can access my files?[/quotem

Try looking for the drive from within Disk Management and double checking the drive letter.

I don't see the hard disk in Disk Management. I can see the C: drive, which is my new SSD. I can see the D: drive, which is my DVD drive. The F: drive (hard disk) is not there.

 

[SBMfromLA]

Latest update:

I took the old/defective SSD out of my computer and replaced it with the new, larger one. I installed Windows 7 Professional 64 bit from my disk. That went fine. Now the problem is that I can't see my 1TB hard disk, which was my F: drive. The hard disk is visible in Device Manager but it is not visible in My Computer. How can I get Windows to recognize my hard disk so I can access my files?[/quotem

Try looking for the drive from within Disk Management and double checking the drive letter.

I don't see the hard disk in Disk Management. I can see the C: drive, which is my new SSD. I can see the D: drive, which is my DVD drive. The F: drive (hard disk) is not there.

What you should do is go into your BIOS to check if it's detected there. If not, then it's possible you forgot to plug in your hard drive or your knocked loose one of the cables.

 

[atomicdumpling]

The hard disk does show up in the BIOS and in Device Manager, but not in My Computer or Windows Explorer. I double-checked the SATA and power cables to the drive and they are connected properly.

 

[atomicdumpling]

The hard disk in the Disk Management list displays a yellow ! mark and says it is Disk 1, dynamic, foreign disk. There is no drive letter attached (used to be the F: drive).

 

[atomicdumpling]

I was able to get it working now I think. In Disk Management I right-clicked the drive, then selected Import Foreign Disks, then I followed some prompts and now it shows up. Thanks to all of you who helped me out.