My PC has "invisible" files that take up 100GB+ of space

-1

I have a Lenovo T460 (with a 256GB SSD), and it is almost full even though I only have around 120GB of files on it. I tried using WinDirStat, but it only showed the files that I already knew about, and left a mysterious 100GB out. Does anyone know what is going on?

EDIT: To clarify, WinDirStat does not show those files AT ALL.

Will Hopkins

Posted 2017-08-17T21:25:15.017

Reputation: 99

Check out script I posted here: https://superuser.com/questions/1187299/windows-7-cleanup-before-clonezilla-backup/1187334#1187334 but if you look at the section of the batch script where it starts as ::Empty all recycle bins just run each of those lines moving down to the end from an admin elevated command prompt. If you want to move the whole script as administrator then that will be fine too. I suspect hibernate files, and VSS backup snapshots, etc. taking up space you cannot see as a directory or flat files easily.

– Pimp Juice IT – 2017-08-17T21:46:30.570

better use TreesizeFree, WInDirStat sucks – magicandre1981 – 2017-08-18T15:44:18.833

as I wrote use Treesizefree (started as admin), WinDirStat is crap – magicandre1981 – 2017-08-19T06:43:23.930

Answers

Funny thing about hard drives, depending on what software you're using, recovery partitions can be "seen" by some software but not recognized. I've been puzzled before on both Windows and OS X when both Windirstat and Disk Inventory X show a grey area as a chunk of the drive. Generally it will be labelled "Other space". In Disk Inventory X you can view this by selecting "View" in the menu bar and "Show Other Space".

"So where is my data going?" Well as mentioned above it can be accounted for in the following:

Files that aren't recognized (usually due to a lack of permissions from the scanning software)
"invisible files" yeah not kidding about this one, you need to enable viewing all the files in the system on OS X and Windows, same goes for Linux unless you're using CD within the terminal.
partitions, generally swap space and recovery partitions not visible to most software unless specifically designed for viewing partitions (e.g. disk utility, gparted, disks, computer management).

Thanks how this helps, according to Windirstat I'm "missing 100GB" from my 1TB HDD. Clearly not true, none to worry.

Tmanok

Posted 2017-08-17T21:25:15.017

Reputation: 78