SDD system drive free space shrinks when independent HDD is not connected

fentanes

Prominent
Aug 31, 2017
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I have three drives on my computer, an SSD and 2 HDD; my system drive is the SDD, and one of the HDD I use for backing up Windows 10 with a System Image.

Lately this HDD with the System Image has been failing and sometimes it isn’t detected by the computer, this shouldn’t be a problem since I don’t care for the System Image, the problem is that when this HDD is connected my main drive (the SSD) has a free space of 20 GB, and when it isn’t detected my main drive (the SSD) has a free space of 2GB.
I don’t know why this happens, and when I try to deactivate the System Image function in windows 10 since it won’t detect the HDD that has the image, it states that the System Image back up is not activated.

What do I do to solve this? I don’t even know if the System Image function is the cause of this problem. What are those 18 GB in difference?
 
Solution
Virtual Memory perhaps?

Windows 10?

Try "WIN" + "I" > System > Storage.

Look at "Manage Storage Spaces" . May be some clue therein.

Open Disk Manager with and without the HDD present. See what differences exist.