Question Why is my C: Drive getting full all of a sudden?

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ArthurDDensley

ArthurDDensley

Jun 5, 2024
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Specs: MSI Sword 15 A12UD

Processor 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-12500H 3.10 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable)
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Edition Windows 11 Home Single Language
Version 23H2
Graphics Processor NVIDIA RTX 3050 4GB GDDR6
Storage 1TB M.2 NVME SSD

Context: C: Drive Running out of space, almost to 0 bytes out of 151 GB of allocated space out of 931GB of total SSD storage space.
Issue started a week or two weeks back. I run Opera GX Browser with more than 15+ tabs, mostly youtube, and concurrently FPS Games like Valorant
or Creative Apps like After Effects or Blender.

I really don't know what might be causing the issue here, but the pagefile.sys is the one of the largest files as I can see in WinDirStat.

How do I change where the page files are stored, and what steps I can to check if everything is ok and nothing is corrupted.
 
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Lutfij said:
Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

You might want to use Disk Cleaner, hit start>type Disk Cleaner>Run as Administrator, a new window should appear, choose C Drive and see what sort of space get's freed up.
Click to expand...
Hi, @Lutfij , I can see that I can only free a max space of 35mb, which brings me to question that it might be a different file or some application unloading the dump data on the c drive (sorry if the line doesn't make much sense, I am new to this 😀
 
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ArthurDDensley said:
I really don't know what might be causing the issue here, but the pagefile.sys is the one of the largest files as I can see in WinDirStat.
How do I change where the page files are stored, and what steps I can to check if everything is ok and nothing is corrupted.
Click to expand...
Please show screenshot from Disk Management.
(upload to imgur.com and post link)

If you have hibernation enabled, you can free quite a lot of space by disabling it.
Execute from elevated command prompt
powercfg -h off​
 
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I would blame small size for C, you yourself said is 151GB which is not that much.
especially if you install things there and not to other drives.
also installed things CAN by default use that drive for swap/caching, especially blender.
so those are an option.
any idea how much free space you used to have before the issues?

not the definite issue but... some steps to check.
user\appdata can get quite bloated since all programs and apps like to dump stuff there.

also I wouldn't count disk-cleanup (the windows one, remember to right click run as administrator or it skips ALL windows update files ) as reliable. it lists 4.55GB as cleanable.
it does NOT list windows/temp completely which has 10GB of things. (for me)
it does not list other temp folders which have 1GB (for me)
it does not list browser caches which are under user\appdata\ (total of 4.8GB for me)
in short, it doesn't list everything.
browsers have their own cache clearing options.

check user\documents size and if you can move some things out of there, it is another common "lets dump it all here" by Microsoft.

I find windirstat as helpful visual tool to find big files and where files are (since folders are grouped as boxes)

check folders and their size in there and just keep looking down if anything seems... too big.
I'd say
 
Last edited:
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ArthurDDensley said:
Specs: MSI Sword 15 A12UD

Processor 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-12500H 3.10 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable)
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Edition Windows 11 Home Single Language
Version 23H2
Graphics Processor NVIDIA RTX 3050 4GB GDDR6
Storage 1TB M.2 NVME SSD

Context: C: Drive Running out of space, almost to 0 bytes out of 151 GB of allocated space out of 931GB of total SSD storage space.
Issue started a week or two weeks back. I run Opera GX Browser with more than 15+ tabs, mostly youtube, and concurrently FPS Games like Valorant
or Creative Apps like After Effects or Blender.

I really don't know what might be causing the issue here, but the pagefile.sys is the one of the largest files as I can see in WinDirStat.

How do I change where the page files are stored, and what steps I can to check if everything is ok and nothing is corrupted.
Click to expand...
How large is the page file?
Did you set manual size, or is it auto?

You can try Glary Utilities' Disk Space Analysis - https://www.glarysoft.com/glary-utilities/
It can show you what is taking up space, though it may not explain why.
 
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ArthurDDensley said:
Hi, @Lutfij , I can see that I can only free a max space of 35mb, which brings me to question that it might be a different file or some application unloading the dump data on the c drive (sorry if the line doesn't make much sense, I am new to this 😀
Click to expand...
Wise Disk Cleaner is way more thorough and useful than Windows. And it's free.

I use it before full backups as it removes gigs of garbage and superfluous stuff.

Wise Disk Cleaner
 
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easiest way to get some of your hard drive space is to go to restore point settings , turn off restore point then turn it back on.

many years ago windows updates used to use huge amounts pf hard drive space because before it downloaded updates it would automatically set a restore point ..... IMHO having restore points is a waste of time because in the last 21 years of using a pc i can only think of a couple of times when system restore has helped me.

The majority of time when you think system restore needs to be used the damage is too great for it to help me.
 
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MJS WARLORD said:
easiest way to get some of your hard drive space is to go to restore point settings , turn off restore point then turn it back on.

many years ago windows updates used to use huge amounts pf hard drive space because before it downloaded updates it would automatically set a restore point ..... IMHO having restore points is a waste of time because in the last 21 years of using a pc i can only think of a couple of times when system restore has helped me.

The majority of time when you think system restore needs to be used the damage is too great for it to help me.
Click to expand...
Did this, could only recover around 880 mb of space
 
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little_me said:
I would blame small size for C, you yourself said is 151GB which is not that much.
especially if you install things there and not to other drives.
also installed things CAN by default use that drive for swap/caching, especially blender.
so those are an option.
any idea how much free space you used to have before the issues?

not the definite issue but... some steps to check.
user\appdata can get quite bloated since all programs and apps like to dump stuff there.

also I wouldn't count disk-cleanup (the windows one, remember to right click run as administrator or it skips ALL windows update files ) as reliable. it lists 4.55GB as cleanable.
it does NOT list windows/temp completely which has 10GB of things. (for me)
it does not list other temp folders which have 1GB (for me)
it does not list browser caches which are under user\appdata\ (total of 4.8GB for me)
in short, it doesn't list everything.
browsers have their own cache clearing options.

check user\documents size and if you can move some things out of there, it is another common "lets dump it all here" by Microsoft.

I find windirstat as helpful visual tool to find big files and where files are (since folders are grouped as boxes)

check folders and their size in there and just keep looking down if anything seems... too big.
I'd say
Click to expand...
I used to have atleast 30gb or at max 50gb of free space, but I really don't know what's causing this issue, I have the OneDrive constantly uploading my docs and pics to the cloud, does it store some data on C for uploading? should I disable OneDrive?
 
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ArthurDDensley said:
I can't see an option to reduce storage from my D drive and add it to the C drive.
Click to expand...
You can't. That's not, how it works.
To add space from D: drive to C: drive, you'd have to
  1. Get another drive (external or internal) to hold entire capacity of D: partition;
  2. Copy D: partition contents to new drive;
  3. Delete D: partition;
  4. Extend C: partition;
  5. Create D: partition in remaining free space;
  6. Copy data back from new drive.
What you can do -
you can remove pagefile from C: partition, because you have pagefile on D: partition already.
There is no need to have pagefile on multiple drives.

Control Panel/System/Advanced System Settings/Advanced/Performance/Settings/Advanced/Virtual Memory/Change/
and set pagefile on C: drive to custom size - 16MB initial, 16MB max (or no pagefile on C: ).
 
Last edited:
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SkyNetRising said:
You can't. That's not, how it works.
To add space from D: drive to C: drive, you'd have to
  1. Get another drive (external or internal) to hold entire capacity of D: partition;
  2. Copy D: partition contents to new drive;
  3. Delete D: partition;
  4. Extend C: partition;
  5. Create D: partition in remaining free space;
  6. Copy data back from new drive.
What you can do -
you can remove pagefile from C: partition, because you have pagefile on D: partition already.
There is no need to have pagefile on multiple drives.

Control Panel/System/Advanced System Settings/Advanced/Performance/Settings/Advanced/Virtual Memory/Change/
and set pagefile on C: drive to custom size - 16MB initial, 16MB max (or no pagefile on C: ).
Click to expand...
Hey @SkyNetRising , Thanks for the advice, current free space stands up to 24.9GB now, which I think is more than sufficient. I am thinking of buying a 512gb SATA SSD to go with my Sword 15 as an additional upgrade as most of my design files are around that storage limit.
 
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