Massive Amounts of Unaccounted Gigabytes

[Apolyc]

I noticed that by local disc C was almost full. Said 86 gigs available out of 930.
When i looked at the details it says im using 653 GB for "Apps and features" But when i look in there, what is displayed is easily only about 40 GB.
Where the hell is the other 600 coming from? A full virus scan brings up nothing. Whats going on?

[sensei]

Long shot, but did you try and check your Recycle Bin settings and see what it's set too?

[Twoddle]

Type "storage" into Settings, there's a few options to delete temp files and old windows files from previous.

If you have lots of small files somewhere then the format of the drive can affect space used, eg. the minimum file allocation space of an exFat drive is 128Kb, it's possible even only a few MB of small files can take GBs of space.

Try this program too https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free, it gives a graphical picture of disk space used by folders and it's fun to play around with. I recommend the portable version so you can run it in place and you don't have to install it.

[chazus]

Try this program too https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free,

This, here. Virtually end of thread. I use this all the time with customers who say the same thing.

80% of the time, it's something like iPhone backups, DropBox, Steam Games their kid downloaded, or something that they didnt realize takes up space
20% of the time, it's because they have a laptop with a 32gb SSD that runs out of space by turning it on.

[wing5wong]

alternative to the above, i use this https://windirstat.net/

quick and easy to find random stuff.
Chrome, spotify, and plenty of other programs will literally have 20+G of stuff hidden away.

[Yizu]

When i looked at the details it says im using 653 GB for "Apps and features" But when i look in there, what is displayed is easily only about 40 GB.
Where the hell is the other 600 coming from? A full virus scan brings up nothing. Whats going on?

Look where? On the storage settings app? Some games even with install sizes of 100gb will sometimes show 1mb or sometimes none in that info pane. You wanna go to where your games are installed right click the folder and see how much space are they really taking up.

[Dizzyswiftz]

Id hit it with CCleaner and see what comes up.

[Dadwen]

I had users computer that was running a older version of Windows 10 (1703 or somewhere around there), and the metro apps folder was chewing up a ton of space, some bug it kept re-downloading the same Pre-installed windows apps once I updated it at the time to the newest 2004 he got back about 120 gigs of space.

*everything in windows didn't show the apps using all that space.

[chazus]

Id hit it with CCleaner and see what comes up.

I don't recommend CCleaner without knowing exactly what you're doing. It's a great tool, but I've had lots of people see "You have 100gb to clean up!" and they go "OK! GREAT!" and it cleans everything up. Temp files (yay), downloads (yay?), web history (what site was that again?), saved passwords (shit)

[Yizu]

I don't recommend CCleaner without knowing exactly what you're doing. It's a great tool, but I've had lots of people see "You have 100gb to clean up!" and they go "OK! GREAT!" and it cleans everything up. Temp files (yay), downloads (yay?), web history (what site was that again?), saved passwords (shit)

Arent those stored in google cloud?

[Dizzyswiftz]

I don't recommend CCleaner without knowing exactly what you're doing. It's a great tool, but I've had lots of people see "You have 100gb to clean up!" and they go "OK! GREAT!" and it cleans everything up. Temp files (yay), downloads (yay?), web history (what site was that again?), saved passwords (shit)

I mean yea, that's a possibility I forgot to mention XD. But hey, with some adjusted settings you pointed out, its still a viable option! Another user above mentioned checking the OP's Windows 10 version too.

[Twoddle]

I don't recommend CCleaner without knowing exactly what you're doing. It's a great tool, but I've had lots of people see "You have 100gb to clean up!" and they go "OK! GREAT!" and it cleans everything up. Temp files (yay), downloads (yay?), web history (what site was that again?), saved passwords (shit)

The same people who install anti-virus but proceed to click away all the warnings when they're on shady websites installing "required plugins".

CCleaner got a bad rap when somehow a version with malware got uploaded back in 2017. That's when it changed hands and a subtle option to install McAfee started to appear in the installer. It got sorted pretty quickly though, I still think it's the best cleaner out there. Tried Glary Utilities on a virtual machine, it's too bloated for my liking for something that's supposed to keep your machine clean.

[Flame6]

alternative to the above, i use this https://windirstat.net/

quick and easy to find random stuff.
Chrome, spotify, and plenty of other programs will literally have 20+G of stuff hidden away.

This. Windirstat is easy to use, and you'll find it in minutes.

[Twoddle]

This. Windirstat is easy to use, and you'll find it in minutes.

Tried them both tbh, that and Treesize. Wouldn't say one is any better than the other.

[Twoddle]

Wiztree is another one.

https://www.diskanalyzer.com/

[ldev]

Install wsl and run ncdu lel