Where has all my hard drive space gone?! Please Help!

JackST

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Aug 6, 2013
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Hi
I have a 120GB Sandisk SSD, on my computer it says it's capacity is 117GB. I've had my self build pc for about a month now and I use it for gaming and general use.
The games are installed on a 320GB hard drive (I have made sure all games are actually installed there and not on the SSD)
I've been fine for storage space up until now, I always had about 30-40GB remaining of the 117GB. But its now dipped to 10GB..

All media, videos, music, pictures etc is on the HDD
All downloads from chrome, other programs etc are to go automatically to the HDD
All games are on the SSD
The downloads folder on the SSD is empty
On my computer > 120GB SSD
> Windows file = 18.2GB
> Program FIles = 4.55GB
> Program Files (x86) = 8.38GB
> Users = 21GB
> Program data = 1GB
total = 53GB

So in theory I should have about 65GB free? yet i only have 10GB
And yes, I have done a full cleanup of internet history, cookies, recycling bin etc with ccleaner
I am running windows 8 if it helps
Where has all my storage disappeared to?! Please help!


 

mjmacka

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May 22, 2012
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Right clock on "this computer" go to "manage" and open "Disk Management." Check if your SSD has one partition using all 120 gb of space or if you have a second partition.

If it's one disk with roughly 120 GB of space, download and install windirstat. With that application you should be able to see if you have anything using up space you don't know about.
 
to start to fix run cleanmgr.exe
http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-8/how-to-run-disk-cleanup-in-windows-8/

there are otherthing you can do but that is a easy start

-pagefile.sys (generally twice the size of your physical RAM)
-deleted files that are still in the recycle bin
- various copies of various windows updates that are backed up until you asked for them to be removed
- various old restore points
- hibernation file
- internet browser cache files
- java cache files
- macromedia cache files

these tend to be the big ones




 

JackST

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Aug 6, 2013
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It says that the total size of the disk is only 49.1GB?
Also there are 2 partitions one is 117GB the other is 350MB

Print screen here -- http://imgur.com/wvUrM7Z
 
start control panel
(windows key +x then type p)
select system and security
click on administrative tools
click on computer management
click on disk management

find your drive that is too small such as c:
right mouse click on the drive and see if extend volume is a option. if so extend it to the max size
 

JackST

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Aug 6, 2013
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I'm familiar with partitioning hard drives, there are only two. one 117GB one (my C drive) and a 350MB one
 
here is another possible cause:

normal write operations on a SSD will result in the drive "getting smaller" the firmware of the drive will mark blocks as bad after they get a write failure to that block, it will then provision another block from the reserved blocks copy the data to it and continue until it is out of reserved blocks. At that time it will, continue by using any free block until all free blocks are used and the drive will be full.

this can be cause by excessive random write operations to the SSD, most often via hard drive test programs
designed for a HDD running for extended period on a SSD. Anything with large write IO can also do this. Databases, cache files. even bugs in the firmware of the SSD can mark blocks bad when they are not bad.

- I would look at resource monitor and check to see how much write IO is going to your disk and reduce it.
- run a utility and check your status of the drive try crystaldiskinfo to see if this is the case





 

JackST

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Aug 6, 2013
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I have ran crystalDiskInfo and it says that the drive is at 100% health
Another print screen http://imgur.com/8ZZsg1g
Ignore the Caution hard drive, it's an old one and not the one i'm concerned about.
Thanks
 
I would look for a firmware update for your ssd from sandisk
http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9328 (not sure this is the correct link, version numbers don't match correctly)

-if you can boot to your BIOS, try to see what the size that the BIOS reports your drive is. it it is correct, then a windows driver is screwed up. it it is wrong then i think the ssd firmware is reporting has used its reserved blocks
or had a failure and maked a bunch of your drive as bad. it could also be just a firmware bug.

also, crystaldiskinfo is pretty good but a lot of the firmware on SSD don't report correctly and have to be updated



 

IrvSp

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Aug 17, 2013
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You probably have SYSTEM RESTORE turned on for the drive. That can easily consume 30GB's of the drive and NOT show up normally.

I have a similar sized SSD as C: with NO SYSTEM RESTORE on it (I use a backup program), and when I run CHKDSK I get this:

================
112332799 KB total disk space.
64941900 KB in 219876 files.
135952 KB in 46269 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
571855 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
46683092 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
28083199 total allocation units on disk.
11670773 allocation units available on disk.
=================

You should get about the same results unless you have System Restore on, in that case space available would be smaller.

Also, you can enable FREE SPACE to be shown in WinDirStat. That will show you the complete disk and size as will CHKDSK.
 
dam windows 8 has 14gb of .dll files. another reason not to upgrade that's a lot of library's there.

anyways does sandisk toolkit have any Drive optimization scans or something like that. Samsung has one in there tool kit which is what trim is suppose(cleans up the unused disk) to but forces it to run immediately to clean up the drive. If so have u tried to run it yet.