Question Something is eating my C:

[aesthete18]

I posted a thread yesterday but it's gone not sure why it was deleted. If I posted in the wrong sub, sorry.

The story is, my PC has been saying to free up space for I think a couple of weeks but given that I had installed a game not too long ago, I figured it was that. Fast forward to few days ago, I tried to save a small file and it said there was no space. To my shock my space was down to 50mb. I freed up 1gb and even though I had scanned my PC maybe a week prior something felt off. The next day, it was down to around 50mb again from 1gb. I posted the thread and did an antivirus scan again. The antivirus wasn't updating which was an issue on the last scan as well. So I uninstalled, reinstalled, updated and restarted the PC a few times (uninstall/install). After it was all done, my space was back to 4gb. Not sure what happened but I was happy. Now it's down to 200mb!

Relevant info:

• AMD Radeon HD 6530D
• Kingston 4GB PC10600 DDR3 1333
• AMD ATHLON II A6-3500 Triple Core APU 2.1GHz Processor
• Gigabyte A75M-S2V Motherboard
• Trend Sonic TSCS130-BB 450W ATX Casing
• Western Digital 500GB 7200RPM 16MB 3.5inch SATA6.0 Caviar Blue HDD

What's happening to my PC? Is this a virus or a bitcoin miner? I've been hearing about that. Please advice, I'm not sure what's happening.

Thank you.

 

[DSzymborski]

Hard to tell without looking at your PC. Using something like WinDirStat would tell you where and what your files are.

There's a lot of variance in how much space is being used because of things such as cache files that programs create and changes in the page file size. It may be hard to pinpoint hard drive changes this small as being the result of a problem; your issues are being compounded by the fact that you're using far too much space.

Only having 4 GB of free space on a 500 GB hard drive is already a dire emergency. On a mechanical hard drive you should be leaving 10% of its space free and that's even more important on a drive on which you're housing your operating system. Windows itself tends to accumulate digital barnacles of its own; when was the last time you did a format and a fresh reinstall?

 

[DSzymborski]

Hard to tell without looking at your PC. Using something like WinDirStat would tell you where and what your files are.

There's a lot of variance in how much space is being used because of things such as cache files that programs create and changes in the page file size. It may be hard to pinpoint hard drive changes this small as being the result of a problem; your issues are being compounded by the fact that you're using far too much space.

Only having 4 GB of free space on a 500 GB hard drive is already a dire emergency. On a mechanical hard drive you should be leaving 10% of its space free and that's even more important on a drive on which you're housing your operating system. Windows itself tends to accumulate digital barnacles of its own; when was the last time you did a format and a fresh reinstall?

 

[aesthete18]

Hard to tell without looking at your PC. Using something like WinDirStat would tell you where and what your files are.

There's a lot of variance in how much space is being used because of things such as cache files that programs create and changes in the page file size. It may be hard to pinpoint hard drive changes this small as being the result of a problem; your issues are being compounded by the fact that you're using far too much space.

Only having 4 GB of free space on a 500 GB hard drive is already a dire emergency. On a mechanical hard drive you should be leaving 10% of its space free and that's even more important on a drive on which you're housing your operating system. Windows itself tends to accumulate digital barnacles of its own; when was the last time you did a format and a fresh reinstall?

It might be something to do with the cache since restarting the PC that time brought back my space. Although in all the years I've had this PC I've never seen something eat that much space especially since I've had generally low space on it for years. It might be Photoshop as that's what I've been using lately but then again I've been using that for years too without issues. I'll check out WinDirStat.


My C drive has 145gb but I don't know what is using it as most of my big stuff is on other drives. I'll try that app. Any other advice? This is not a virus then? That's what I'm worried about.

 

[elitech]

As previously stated, it is hard to say without examining. Perhaps it is Windows? What windows are u running? If it is Win 10, it could be patches.

 

[mdd1963]

Set your Recycle Bin properties to a custom size, lower it to like 8 GB or so....(no need to waste up to 25-50 GB reserved space for no reason)

Then perhaps run CCleaner Portable....

https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/builds

Let it delete old WIndows versions, etc....