What's a good way to see what's taking up a lot of HDD space?

JohnJSal

JohnJSal

Active Member
It just came to my attention that I have only 83GB left on my 500GB HDD. I don't have much installed. I tend to uninstall games after I play them, etc. A quick look at my "Uninstall programs" list doesn't show much that could be the culprits, but I also notice that some games that ARE installed are listed as taking up, for example, 1.5MB, which of course is wrong, so I guess this amount is just some other measurement and not the entire game.

Anyway, is there some good software I can use that will help me find what's taking up so much space? Last I remember, I had well over 100GB left, maybe more. And I don't just mean something that finds large individual files, but preferably something that can find large programs (such as games) and let me know what I can uninstall.

I already ran the Windows disk cleanup but that only cleared about 4GB. I'm hoping for much more!

Thanks!
 
You can run CCleaner. That might give you a few extra gigs.

You could just... get a bigger harddrive. They're pretty cheap nowadays for 2TB.
 
I have Windows 7 64-bit. I think I have system restore turned off, but I'll have to check that.

Edit: Yes, I don't seem to have any restore points.
 
Intel_man said:
You can run CCleaner. That might give you a few extra gigs.

You could just... get a bigger harddrive. They're pretty cheap nowadays for 2TB.
Click to expand...

CCleaner seems nice, but it didn't clear up much space. Just a couple of gigs. I'm really at a loss at what could be taking up so much space. Maybe just a combination of things adding up, but I know I used to have more than this, and not much has changed.
 
Follow John's link and get windirstat

It will crawl all of your directories, give you size statistics and even a visual representation of what's taking up your space.
 
Ok, I'm a bit confused. According to Windows Explorer, my HDD has a total of 465GB of space, and of that 390GB are used. But I ran Windirstat and it showed the usage seen here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8bnUgmY20n8bEVhNUl4dFV4R2s

Now, I'm not sure if the 155GB at the top (for the C: drive) is a separate amount, or if it's just the total of the amounts below it added together (because the total of those below it do come out to about 155), but even if I assume the 155GB is a *separate* amount of storage and I add to it all the totals below it, I only come up with about 311GB.

So I'm still left wondering, where's the other 150GB I should have free?
 
Show Free Space says 76GB, which is what Windows Explorer was saying and which is what seems low to me.

I also tried Show Unknown and it says 234GB! What in the world is this!?
 
155 is an aggregate.

I'd suggest doing a chkdsk C: /r , choosing yes for scanning on reboot and then rebooting. Some erroneous free space figures can be caused by file system corruption.
 
Go into disk management and take a screenshot and post it. It's possible you have a second partition thats not formatted and assigned a drive letter.
 
Can you post the actual bubble map so to speak so we can get an idea on where everything is.

Example

windirstat.jpg
 
JohnJSal said:
Ok, I'm a bit confused. According to Windows Explorer, my HDD has a total of 465GB of space, and of that 390GB are used. But I ran Windirstat and it showed the usage seen here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8bnUgmY20n8bEVhNUl4dFV4R2s

Now, I'm not sure if the 155GB at the top (for the C: drive) is a separate amount, or if it's just the total of the amounts below it added together (because the total of those below it do come out to about 155), but even if I assume the 155GB is a *separate* amount of storage and I add to it all the totals below it, I only come up with about 311GB.

So I'm still left wondering, where's the other 150GB I should have free?
Click to expand...
From this screenshot it looks like only 155GB is used.
 
beers said:
155 is an aggregate.

I'd suggest doing a chkdsk C: /r , choosing yes for scanning on reboot and then rebooting. Some erroneous free space figures can be caused by file system corruption.
Click to expand...

I just did this but it didn't change the amount of my free space.
 
Ok, here is the scan with the bubble map: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8bnUgmY20n8VHVoaFJJU2xxOXc

The first time I did it, I chose "Individual Directory" and just scanned the C: drive. This time I chose "All Local Drives," just in case that made a difference. It didn't change anything, except that it added the size of my portable USB drive (E) to the mix, so basically just ignore the E: drive and subtract that 55GB from the total.

Essentially what seems to be happening is this: My total HDD size is 465GB, and Windows (and WinDirStat) is reporting that I have only 78GB free. But WinDirStat is also showing that my C: drive (which is my entire HDD) is only using 155GB, so I should have about 300GB free.

I seem to be missing about 225GB. But notice that the "Unknown" category shows 218GB, so this seems to be the missing amount. My question is, what is the "Unknown" space? It must be on the C: drive, but for whatever reason, WinDirStat is listing it separately.
 
Intel_man said:
I would say it's unsual to see 218gb of unknown space. Have you tried disk defragment?
Click to expand...

Well, originally I wanted to do a defrag, but that's when I noticed that I had less free space than I thought I should. So I wanted to try to fix this problem and clear up as much space as possible *before* the defrag.

I figure the defrag will be more effective that way. I doubt a defrag will recover any free space.
 
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