Deleting ~16GB off of my SSD but it came back even bigger?

OldBook

Reputable
Jul 20, 2014
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4,510
Just yesterday I deleted alot of useless files resulting in me having 16GB open space, the first time I turn my pc on again(today) I suddenly only have 300Mb left? Even less than it was before deleting all those things.

This is also the second time this has happened, i've deleted some 10GB ish on 2 other occasions and it all seems to come back for no reason.

Here I have a screenshot of what's occupying my space after i've just deleted more stuff.
53def3cb6fbf43129e8a42e28b68dec4.jpg

I really don't have any idea why this is happening. Maybe a virus or something? any ideas?
 
Solution
You can free up space used by hiberfile.sys and pagefile.sys.
If you don't use hibernation feature, execute from elevated command prompt:
powercfg -h off
And set pagefile to something smaller - 1GB with autogrow to 4GB.
All that will free up ~27GB of space on your disk.
You can free up space used by hiberfile.sys and pagefile.sys.
If you don't use hibernation feature, execute from elevated command prompt:
powercfg -h off
And set pagefile to something smaller - 1GB with autogrow to 4GB.
All that will free up ~27GB of space on your disk.
 
Solution

Quaiden

Reputable
Sep 27, 2014
39
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4,560
There are two file stores on the drive image which could be the root of your issue. First is the PageFile.sys file and the other is the HiberFil.sys. These are dynamic files managed by Windows.

Pagefile.sys is your page file. You page file is where windows stores data it needs to quickly and/or repeatedly access while the OS is running. Usually, if you have your page file set to dynamic/windows controlled, you page file will be minimum x2 the size of you system RAM. So, if there was not enough space on the drive for windows to have the minimum x2 RAM space it likes it will eat up everything it can and everytime you free up space and reboot, it will take up more of the free space until it reaches the x2 RAM minimum.

Hiberfil.sys is the file used by the system when you put your computer in Hibernate mode. I HIGHLY recommend to all windows users to disable hybernation as it takes up a lot of space on your system drive and really, how often do people use it? The size of this file is determined by windows and allows for Windows to cache all your RAM storage to your SSD/HDD when you put your computer in hibernate mode. Then when you wake it up it can quickly recover the files back to RAM without having to go through the whole system boot process.

Since both these file stores are dynamic, I am guessing they are growing in size to reach what windows thinks is needed for best system performance.

I hope this helps.