Samsung SSD 840 I lose space on without installing anything, please help

christhegamer

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Feb 24, 2016
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Hi guys, about a year ago when I installed windows on my SSD I had 160GB of free space but its been about 10-12 months now and I only have 147GB of space so I lost 13GB without installing anything new on my SSD drive I did a disk clean up but it only cleaned up 1gb, I also did a system clean up after i did a disk clean up and all together only 1gb free, I am afraid that If it keeps taking up space without me installing anything it may get to a point where i only have 20-30 gb on my ssd left, does anyone know why my SSD keeps losing space ? 13GB lost over a 10 month period without me installing anything new on it, by the way my SSD drive has windows installed on it and it had a capacity of 232GB but 147GB free... Is this something I should worry about? I dont want one day my SSD drive to get full in the next 4-5 years and then my computer might run really slow... Its weird because in the past 10 months i have not installed anything on it just the operating system, anything i want to install i put it on my other hard drive which is 931GB free.......


So my question is through out the next 3-5 years is it going to keep taking GB off of my ssd drive without me installing anything ? And what should I do so that my SSd drive does not keep losing space and is this normal? I am afraid one day it may be soo full that my computer will run slow lets say in the next 3-5 years so far in 1 year it has lost 13GB.. Thank you so much for any advice or information you guys might have.. Thank you....
 
Solution
I will just add a bit on this hybrid sleep option.

You already have 2 options(all the way back to XP, Earlier with some tweaks or 3rd party software.)

Sleep saves all data in ram and enters a low power state. When you wake up the system resumes with whatever you had open running. If you have a power out, you will not have all your programs open. Unsaved chances to files may be lost(depends if the software has autosave or not.). The chances of hurting Windows is no worse than a power out(in fact less since hard drive cache is most likely already flushed). This is the only data loss that can occur from this. It will NOT mess up the operating system, but may not save your work you had opened(easy fix, save before you leave or use...
Updates will also take space. Things get more features and those come at a cost of space. While all software installs on your other drive, some things may still stay on your SSDs appdata folder.

Your winsxs folder may also get larger over time. Windows seems to keep copies of every version of many things in that folder. Mine is 12.6 gigabytes after almost 6 years.

It looks like you have already run cleanups. You can also check for restore points as listed. If you do not use hibernate you can use the administrative command prompt to run powercfg -h off. This will prevent the system from having a hiberfile.sys.

I would not worry unless you had very little space. Any program that can benefit from the SSD may as well be installed on it.
 

christhegamer

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I do not use hibernation but I do use sleep mode... Does sleep mode keep a folder where space is taken from my SSD drive? If anyone else has any input I would really appreciate all the input I could get from as many people as possible.. Thank you so much guys.... @nukemaster your computer used 12.6 GB after 6 years? Mine used 13gb in only 1 year... Is this something to worry about? Why did yours only do 12.6 in 6 years but mine took 13gb of space in only 1 year....
 

christhegamer

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I went to my command prompt to try and remove it “powercfg.exe -h off” but it said I do not have permission to enable or disable the hibernate feature.... I only use sleep mode not hibernate if i remove it is it going to free up space or is it not necessary since I only use sleep mode?

@nukemaster your computer used 12.6 GB after 6 years? Mine used 13gb in only 1 year... Is this something to worry about? Why did yours only do 12.6 in 6 years but mine took 13gb of space in only 1 year....
 
I would not worry, You may have more updates(I have security only no extra features and stuff) or more hardware in the system.

You need to run the command prompt as an admin. Hit start and type cmd.exe and either rightclick and run as administrator or hold control + shift + enter to run it as admin. You will have to say yes to a UAC prompt.

The prompt that opens now would allow you do not almost anything.

Normal sleep does not use hard drive/ssd space, it just saves everything to memory. Hybrid sleep does both however(and is power out proof as a result).
 

christhegamer

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@nukemaster I read this on google about turning off powercfg -h off....

Warning You may lose data if you make hibernation unavailable and a power loss occurs while the hybrid sleep setting is turned on. When you make hibernation unavailable, hybrid sleep does not work.

Can you please explain this to me does it mean if my computrer is in sleep mode and my house loses power if i have the powercfg -h off does it mean my computer may crash and I lose important windows files? Or is there any extra risk by having the powercfg -h off? Do you recommend I do the powercfg -h off? And I am not sure if I use hybrit sleep or normal sleep mode... My computer turns off and goes into sleep if not used after 1 hr and fans and monitor turn off then with a click of the mouse or touch of the keyboard it turns back on to exactly where I was when it went into sleep mode....
 

USAFRet

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CMD as admin
Hibernation OFF (as above)

No hazard, problem, failmode, badness, etc, etc.
Do it.
 
I will just add a bit on this hybrid sleep option.

You already have 2 options(all the way back to XP, Earlier with some tweaks or 3rd party software.)

Sleep saves all data in ram and enters a low power state. When you wake up the system resumes with whatever you had open running. If you have a power out, you will not have all your programs open. Unsaved chances to files may be lost(depends if the software has autosave or not.). The chances of hurting Windows is no worse than a power out(in fact less since hard drive cache is most likely already flushed). This is the only data loss that can occur from this. It will NOT mess up the operating system, but may not save your work you had opened(easy fix, save before you leave or use autosave).

Hibernation saves all that data that is in ram to a file on the hard drive and then powers off completely. When you start the system after(this is normally done with the power button and not just by clicking or hitting any key) hibernation, Windows will read this file and place it back into memory and resume your operating system just like sleep. Hibernation is slower, but I like it very much on notebook computers because it does not use any battery power. Because the system is fully OFF power outs simply do not effect hibernation.

If you happen to crash or cut power to a computer coming out of or entering hibernation. You will get a message on the next boot allowing you to bypass loading the hibernation state(since it most likely will not work). So it is power out proof as long as the system makes it into hibernation and does not have issues waking(you know how computers can be).

The hibernation files can be as large as your installed memory. For this reason many users remove it to save SSD space

Hybrid Sleep combines the 2 features. It saves data in ram to the hard drive and enters sleep. If you loose power it will wake up like hibernation, but if you do not it will wake up nearly instantly from ram instead. Entering hybrid sleep tends to be slower since the data has to be written to the hard drive(or ssd).

I do not use this feature my self, but I am sure some users like it. I have a UPS(more than 1 :) ) so power loss is not even an issue. A power loss causing issues is rare[I guess it would be bad when installing an update, but even then Windows has resistance to this causing issues.] and not likely outside of what you are working on not being saved. I do not even use sleep much(SSD make starting a system fast anyway).

Using this feature is 100% preference.

Windows 8 / 8.1 / 10 use hibernation to cut down startup times by using a fast startup feature that instead of shutting down, logs out and hibernates(not sleep). This is a useful feature for hard drives(has some rare side effects that restarting instead of shutting down and power up fixes). With an SSD it is kind of a waste because they are so fast at the random operations used for most computing tasks(even the slowest SSD is faster than a fast hard drive)
 
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