Storage space Missing or Being used but i have no clue what by

[gingerpanda]

Ive got a custom Pc which i made several years ago, ive got a 120GB ssd for my OS and a Western Digital Black HDD for general storage. Ive used approxemetly 300GB of my HDD but it says ive only got 200gb free meaning ive got 400GB missing, ive sorted through the properties of the drive and i dont have any back ups or folders or programs that could be taking up 400GB of space.
Ive Cleaned the drive and deleted and uninstalled any software/games im not using and still nothing. ive tried defragging the drive to no avail, it tells me that the drive is 3% fragmented but when i tried to defrag this doesnt change. Ive used WinDirStrat and it shows that only 300Gb of space is being used. Has anyone got any idea of what could be happening? or possible solutions that i could try? the only other idea that i have would be to format the drive and re-install everything that is on it.

 

[USAFRet]

Please show us a screencap of your Disk Management window, showing both the top and bottom parts of the window.

 

[gingerpanda]

w

 

[gingerpanda]

1

 

[USAFRet]

whats the best way to send the screen shot? i cant figure out how to post on here

Detailed instructions on posting images on Tom's hardware.
http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2580030/detailed-instructions-posting-images-tom-hardware.html


Basically, take the screencap and save it
Upload to somewhere like imgur.com
Post the link here.

 

[gingerpanda]

https://imgur.com/8nIf6lk

Here is a screenshot of the disk management tab, also sorry for the problems ive got no clue how to do anything on here.

 

[USAFRet]

OK...on the 1TB D drive, approx 206GB free. So ~700GB used space.

Run WinDirStat again, Run as Administrator.

Also, install and run TreeSize
See what they say.

Post the screencaps here.

 

[ac13044]

Right click on start then system properties turn off system protection or delete the restore points. that usually takes up most of hdd space

 

[gingerpanda]

https://imgur.com/a/mI1Ui

https://imgur.com/a/7hrgC

okay i ran as admin which i never done before, it looks like there is 300gb of back ups should i try deleting some of the older ones?

 

[USAFRet]

https://imgur.com/a/mI1Ui

https://imgur.com/a/7hrgC

okay i ran as admin which i never done before, it looks like there is 300gb of back ups should i try deleting some of the older ones?

Yup.
300GB of .zip files.
What are they?

200GB of Steam games.
100GB of a WindowsImageBackup.

 

[gingerpanda]

Also ive disabled system protection on the drive

 

[ac13044]

go to control panel file history system image backup see if there is an option to turn that off

 

[gingerpanda]

The ziped files appear to have been over a dozen backups ive deleted all but the most recent one, i have no clue what the Windows image backup would be though

 

[USAFRet]

The ziped files appear to have been over a dozen backups ive deleted all but the most recent one, i have no clue what the Windows image backup would be though

That is created by the Windows Backup & Restore function.

 

[gingerpanda]

ive got rid of the windows image backup and the other backups and it appears that everything is about the right size now. thanks for the help

 

[USAFRet]

ive got rid of the windows image backup and the other backups and it appears that everything is about the right size now. thanks for the help

Good deal.
The WinDirStat needs to be Run As Administrator, to allow it to read everything(mostly).
Otherwise, it skips a bunch of stuff.