How to see where all my storage space is going?

Gorganoth

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Sep 10, 2016
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hello everyone,
I must start out by saying that i feel very foolish by asking this question, but I've been looking at it for quite a while and I just can't figure it out.

I have a 120 gb SSD, and I have some 36 gb free, so I'm using some 84 gb. Problem is, I really have no idea what's using this much space, and I've been trying to figure it out.

The only game I have installed is the witcher 3, which windows is telling me takes up 18 gb, but I'm almost sure this must be false, since the download size was some 34 gb.

According to my computer, that's the only 'app' that takes up more than 1 gb, and all the 'apps' that take up more than 100 mb only take up some 5gbs combined (these are for the most part various windows apps). The remaining apps take up less than 1 gb combined.
So apparently there's a bunch of space going to something other than apps, but I store very little else on my computer, there are only few pdfs, word documents, a couple of pictures and no videos. All combined it's less than 1 gb.
My understanding is that windows itself takes up quite a bit of space apart from the windows apps already mentioned, but for the numbers to make sense it would have to take up well over 40 gb. I don't see how much it takes up anywhere.

So my question is, is there a good program that could tell me exactly what's taking up my storage space? And would you all know what it is I'm doing wrong.

Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
For a utility showing disk usage: https://windirstat.net/

Let me note that a 120 GB drive doesn't show up as that much formatted. Windows counts in powers of 2 (technically kibibytes, mibibytes, etc) but drive makers sell drives by true powers of 10. What windows counts as a kilobyte isn't 10^3 but 1024 (2^10), and a megabyte is exactly 1,000,000 bytes for a drive maker but 1024x1024 bytes ( 1,048,576 bytes) to Windows. A gibibyte then is 1,073,741,824 bytes. Do the math and 120GB works out to 111.7 Gibibytes.

tl;dr, your drive is reported as 111.7GB in Windows, so 111.7GB-36GB (free) = 76.7 used.

Anyway, 120GB isn't a whole lot for a boot drive, especially if large games are installed.
For a utility showing disk usage: https://windirstat.net/

Let me note that a 120 GB drive doesn't show up as that much formatted. Windows counts in powers of 2 (technically kibibytes, mibibytes, etc) but drive makers sell drives by true powers of 10. What windows counts as a kilobyte isn't 10^3 but 1024 (2^10), and a megabyte is exactly 1,000,000 bytes for a drive maker but 1024x1024 bytes ( 1,048,576 bytes) to Windows. A gibibyte then is 1,073,741,824 bytes. Do the math and 120GB works out to 111.7 Gibibytes.

tl;dr, your drive is reported as 111.7GB in Windows, so 111.7GB-36GB (free) = 76.7 used.

Anyway, 120GB isn't a whole lot for a boot drive, especially if large games are installed.
 
Solution

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
4thed on WinDirStat

Post a screencap of the result, and we can investigate.

And as above, a 120GB SSD is right on the edge of 'too small'
It is really only ~85GB actual usable space.
111GB actual, and then 15-20% that needs to be free for TRIM to do its thing.

So around 85GB usable space.
 

Gorganoth

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Sep 10, 2016
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4,510
Thanks everyone for your help, it was invaluable! I can free up some 20 gb by getting rid of my old windows and hibernation, so all the numbers fit now.

I know that 120 gb is quite small, and that I won't actually get the full 120 gb, but it'll do.

Thanks again for your help.