Hard Drive Full but No Files in Windows 10
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- čas přidán 2. 06. 2021
- Hard Drive Full but No Files in Windows 10
very strange issue, I shutdown pc and in the morning, my hard drive is nearly full without me adding any data? I show you what caused the issue.
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Very strange problem. Drop us a LIKE 👍
hey fella
Could it be a backup file from Onedrive? Did you try renaming it to Zip/Rar and then try to open it?
809 GB file?!!?! That's disturbing. If you ever find out how/what please share. Thanks 👍
I need a video of how to integrate dart10 in Windows 10 iso
you could rename as .zip and see if it opens
I didn't even know this problem existed, just came to this video to drop a like to support you. A lot of your videos have helped me in the past. Keep up the great work, man!
I appreciate it
Yes, agree. (Maybe the expeditor was a former buddy, XXXX Xates...)
Pro tip: if u don't find the "Local" folder, just the 2 others, do this: Win Key + R and type "%temp%. U'll be redirect to this folder, and there will be appData with the 3 folders.
Bill Gates stored his Black Book on your PC for safe keeping from the misses.
Hope interpol doesn't get Mark......Epsteined.
Most times this is a pre install copy of windows files that are supposed to be deleted once installed. But it doesn't happen for some reason. It is always safer for the installer to not delete the files unless it determines the installation is successful. So even if it is successful any failure of the notification still causes the issue.
This has always been the case but in the past even a complete installation of windows is tiny compared to the disk space so it isn't always even noticed.
You just saved my life man. My Photoshop just crashed and after that my 200GB was gone. Thanks to your video I was able to delete those big files.
Thanks for this. I had a different problem downgrading from windows 11 to 10 I couldn't figure out why my hard drive had so much space taken up given the fact that I couldn't see anything and the installation was supposed to delete all files as far as I was aware but apparently it had just moved some files into a "Windows.Old" folder instead of deleting them. I figured this out with the app you showed in the video.
Thank you for this Brian. Just downloaded Tree Size Free and found a huge 128Gb duplicate video file in my C drive cache.
You're welcome
I had a similar problem, when an email automatic backup program had an update bug. It was concatenating copies of all my email, instead of just updating new ones. Made a 40GB file, all by its clever little self.
I've also seen failed MS upgrades that left hidden copies of the entire old system, but 890GB is incredible. I'd be paranoid about malware.
how do i dleete email copies
You really make some strange choices;
1. Why delete the whole %TEMP% folder, this can "damage" running processes and you loose data. Just delete the one big file
2. Why use this obscure "shred" program - I assume it writes ~800GB of zeros? This choice not only takes a lot of time but also wears out your NVMe. What's wrong with SHIFT+DELETE?
It seems that you're new in pc. everyone deletes their %temp% files everyday
@@drmnhn3264 the things inside it not the folder
The folder itself. It is meant to be deleted cuz the system can (and will) create another one when needed
This problem is very mysterious!
It is curious that some viewers have encountered this mysterious problem, but also do not have answers.
Doesn't it seem significant that the file name, of this temp file, appeared to be GUID generated?
Might it have been worthwhile to make a copy of the file name, since the source of the GUID might have provided some clues as to what application created it?
Simple, straightforward, and helpful! Found that an iTunes backup was taking 58gb of my 256gb C drive, and it was only accessible in the hidden AppData folder. Thanks!
Thanks alot bro! Your note about the apple backup lead me to solve my storage problem finally ❤
One time my friend did an iTunes back up on my PC. Since then my C drive has been full.. How did you delete it from your PC.. I did to get rid of this stuff from my C drive.
You saved me. After getting through tons of garbage advice on google, you brought the actual solution I needed. Thank you
I’ve had the same problem and it turned out to be an error log file that had not had its max size set.
I have seen this happen many times in my life on many different file systems. The tmp file wasn't closed properly upon reboot, likely because the system rebooted so fast it's unable to finish before it happens, thus writing an incorrect file size to the MFT making the file appear to be 890gb when it's probably not.
Interesting
I think this is likely, as I had a booted up a PC, my hard drive was full with real files. But there was a fake file with nothing in it but was larger than my hard drive.
@@HaydanF It happens because it starts to write the file size and then is interrupted. So it writes 50 for example, and since drives don't actually delete data only the table entry for the file, the old data after the 50 is still there and without a proper close marker the computer will interpret this as 50 plus what ever comes after until it finds a close marker. This used to be more common on older Fat 16 systems from hard reboots.
This example was very simplified and missing much detail but is accurate to the general mechanics.
A friend of me, has an external hdd, in hp 2014 (i think) PC shows the files and that's full, but in hp z620 shows only 4 files, i think of hdd ext manufacturer and is empty seems, is it maybe hidden files not shown in the z620(he purchased this after old user did ssd reset... used PC),... or may be hp connected to usb 3 but hp z620 usb 2..?
Great video! Thanks for the help i was going crazy trying to figure it out.
This app was a BIG help I couldn’t find out what was taking up so much space
I would like to know if your internet downloaded the data or was created locally. I think I would have a better idea of where to look if I knew that.
Thanks for the app recommendation.
Under file type there is a bunch of letters there. would that be the same as the product key used of the key Microsoft assigned to the install?
Thank you for the tree size recommendation, it's what I used and found so many things using up my space.
Watcha Bri! I had a user (thinking back now) when I remoted on and found a folder in the temp files which had a bunch of files (not one, but not more than a dozen) and I never rooted out what caused it. I don't think it was malware which is why I never spent much time investigating. I will try remember pop back to this video to see if you solve the puzzle.
In my case, C:\Windows\CSC was the culprit. Apparently it's used by "Sync Center" to cache personal folders that are redirected to a network location such as a NAS, which I do. Folder Size Explorer wasn't showing this as the culprit, but TreeSize did, so the video was worhwhile in the end. I'll be using TreeSize from now on I think. I didn't have Sync Center configured to sync files offline, so these files had to manually cleaned up by taking ownership of that folder, changing permissions, and then deleting it.
This is was actually very helpful! Thank you so much.
Did you run CCleaner? It will create a large ghost file similar to this that is "clearing" the drive, once a run is successful the file is removed and space size returns to normal, if the run was interrupted somehow the file hasn't been removed. Other "drive wipe" softwares may also use this technique.
Great video! was able to clear up hundreds of gigs of runaway space on my 1tbssd
thank you,
my drive as it's aging seems to be filling up,
I even uninstalled 2 games and that didn't seem to help,
this has shown me my issues is the the roaming files,
I have adobe in it and I stopped using them,
and some other redundant files.
helped me salvage some space thank you
The included Disk Clean-up would have happily sorted this. It's been around since at least WinXP, so should be well-known. These days it has a feature under "Clean up system files" which can tidy up the Windows Update data, often releasing 3GB or more, which on a small drive is like gold dust. It also deals with "Delivery optimisation" (keeping App installers in case anyone else wants a copy), and the previous version of Windows for those who have just updated to 21H1 and need their space back.
Nope did that several times and it deleted nothing in the Apps data folder. Thanks though
😂 disk clean up doesn't even work 100%. I'm having the same issue and I did disk cleanup probably 100 times after finding and deleting files and it didn't do anything!
Thank you so much for this information. I downloaded the free version of Tree Size and it turned out I had a McAfee file that had not only no use to me, but well over 400GB in it.
I had a thought - what if the shut down procedure went into a loop and then filled up temp. Sometimes Windows asks you if you want to force applications to end at shutdown - maybe something wasn't done. Maybe there was a virus. If there was malware, it will return. Deleting that file won't change things no matter how that's done. If it's NOT malware, it was a regular process gone awry. In my experience, the one thing that can fill up temp is a corrupted zip file (in whatever format), especially a self-extracting zip. May or may not be it.
Good video, those files look like clipchamp files. They will build up quick in that video editing software especially if you are shooting in 4k videos
Your State Library decided to do a quick overnight digital backup on any free PC they could hack into.
Seriously - something strange may have happened to to the file index record of your drive, making it insane to read by the system.
I'd certainly backup any important files from that drive and then test it rigorously.
Just because we can get huge capacity drives, its not excatly a good idea to hold all your data on a single drive.
It does in fact make data more vulnerable, as you would lose a lot more in one go.
Did you try using Disk Cleanup and Cleanup System Files option under Properties in Explorer Tools?
wow, tree size saved me from hunting down folder after folder of random logs that were just bloating my PC. went from 30 GB free to nearly 300 GB free on a 512 GB SSD.
i cant thank you for the recommendation enough!
Had this same sort of problem with the telegram app on a cell phone... Ended up deleting the app's cache... Got to the point that the device wasn't even usable... Cleared the cache back to normal.... Seems that a lot of apps like requesting permissions to use camera, microphone, storage etc... Some of them aren't necessarily straight up and can be nefarious... Word to the wise; You may want to limit those permissions and those that you can't place a wound strip with the pad over the lens so you don't muck it up... and place the whole mess in your back pocket if your want your conversations discreet because you never know who might be watching or listening!... Great catch Brite09!... You may have just thrown a wrench in the works of a busybody!...
THANK YOU !!!!!!!!! this helped me so much, it wasnt my temp folder but i found the app that was killing my space!
A few weeks ago users reported that their drives filling up and its caused by a bug in windows defender, may be that’s the case here .
I will look into it.
I must check my drive now.
I had the exact same problem today and the temp file was 919 GB in size very strange
This was super helpful. Thank you so much!
Thanks a lot for the video, I have the same problem (that's also the reason I'm here)...but the file on my pc is around 50 gb, nowhere near the size of the one in your extremely strange example.Thanks!
I have seen when making a new install of Windows the installation cash does not get properly cleaned up, and thus taking a huge amount of space that is not necessary. I would not be surprised if a version update can do this type of thing.
Windows Update download large update packages especially if you don't let it check for updates during the initial install.
If you really want to make sure the file has gone after you have deleted it doing using SHIFT and DELETE then all you need to do is right click on the windows, start icon (bottom left) while holding down the ALT key and selecting Windows Powershell(admin) then do the following:
I recommend doing this when no programs are open and last thing so you can leave it overnight to do its thing.
Type: cipher /w:C on the command line and hit ENTER,
to do it on a different drive change the 'C' to the drive letter required. Now, just sit back and wait for Windows to do its magic. This is one of those tasks you should run when you're not using your PC. Consider running it overnight or during downtime on the weekend. Not only will cipher clean up your drive, it may also have the added benefit of returning some extra disk space to you. What the program does is first overwrites each vacant disk space with a zero, then on the 2nd pass overwrites the zeros with nothing which ensures deleted files cannot be recovered with ANY recovery program.
Thank you sir.. Btw.. Is it not advisable to delete files directly from temp thats why you use other programs? In addition did you already discover what causes that huge junk of data? Thanks..
No, don't know what it was.
Its perfectly safe to delete. Any file being used cant be deleted.
When you normally delete a file it only deletes the journal information so the data can be overwritten but until it is overwritten it remains on the drive ..... What he did here was use a program that actually "shreds" or deletes all the data and not just the journal information .... The reasoning behind shredding the file (deleting of of it completely) is to make sure there isn't a virus or trojan embedded in all that data ... On a SSD you could probably just run TRIM on it after a normal delete which should also delete all the data but better safe than sorry
Hey Brian, Onedrive is there anywhere in their documentation about if you accidentally fill it up to max, you can't delete any files, there are 2 recycle bins, and yet you can't delete a file to make room because the recycle bin is part of your storage quota. Its a pain in the arse, you keep getting emails to delete files from one drive, but there's nothing you can do about it until you buy extra storage.
Cheers for this video! Without this I would of been stuck with a ghost download of 60gb in my steam downloads folder.
Thank you for this Video Bri, it helped me a lot :)
Hahah go this once, disk cleanup helped me..
Thanks for the video mate. :)
Glad it helped
hello I want to ask you a question out of computers field ,A friend of mine told me that he watched a video on CZcams about some codes that increase the memory and RAM capacity of phones,I found it illogical.
Can you give your opinion if you have time!!
Thank You So much for reccomending the free size software it was really helpful to solve my issue, I subscribed. Hope it helps :)
Also you can type "prefetch" in run and delete files there.
I had some locked files in my %temp% folder. I used Lock Hunter to sort it out. Temp is emptied now and I know what was locking files.
Browser and Keyboard software in my case.
Is this an issue with Windows defender? I think I have read this problem happening with the latest Windows updates, although I haven't had the issue myself 🤔. Puzzled about the size, it does seem abnormal!
thank you so much i had 14 gb of temp for nothing and it was slowing down my pc you got a sub
I have had a hard drive fill up for no apparent reason... and I discovered it was Windows attempting to make a backup. I noticed your 6TB D: drive has close to 1TB on it... and I'd first investigate whether this 1TB on your C: drive was a Windows instigated backup of the D: drive.
My USB flash drive shows two folder with data and the rest of the folders are empty,also one or twoof the folder names have some strange fonts and they are empty.USB flash drive shows the actual data space tho', Any Idea?. Cheers
Hi! Thanks for making this video. I downloaded the TreeSize preogram and it has shown me the beautifull 311,3 gigs of useless backups on my alternate drive! My issue is gone after 3 years!
That is why always move my Files to another Drive Because remember when ever you download files or something it will reduce your space a bit and mostly if you automatic the software distribution it always fills up the files of it self
Thank you so much this actually cleared so much unnecessary files
Thank you so much for this video man, had no storage but deleted all my games. Treesize was a life saver, my bitcoint wallet made a 250gb file! Thank you agan for the helpful tips
How to do it with a secondary HHD where the OS is not installed?
it just worked, i was fed up searching those files, THANK YOU
would have used Performance monitor to look at the disk activity to see which App was accessing that file.
I had a similar problem on my previous PC, where my SSD (C:-drive) was completely full. It turned out, that some app was filling a Nvidia folder with crap. It was not, as far as I can remember, in a temp folder, as seems to be the case here. Anyway, I got rid of the file(s?), and it never happened again. (Yeah, luckily, I have a dual-boot PC).
If you recently did a "system refresh" or "reset", it will create a hidden folder "$sysreset" and in there is a bunch of old system files, logs that is used to diagnose why the refresh or reset failed. If there was no failure during the reset or refresh you can go ahead and delete the entire "$sysreset" folder. Root directory is "C:\$sysreset". You'll have to enable "show hidden files and folders" first. I did a refresh and finally found it with Treesize. 200gb of a 476gb drive was used by this folder.
I have this issue but the file taking up all this space doesnt seem to be in app data nor is there a file showing up when i use tree size, very annoying. ive ran virus scans and nothing, now considering a hard drive reset but i have stuff i need on it
Very strange... I would probably do a fresh re-installation of Windows. I ran into a problem similar to that a few years ago; I found that Spotify was writing huge amounts of data to my drive, so I deleted the Spotify app from the desktop and just use Spotify in a browser.
THANK GOD! I found your video, this worked beautifully. Thank you!
Thanks for the video, this helped me find my problem folder.
@Britec09 I thought you weren't supposed to run optimization defrag on SSD's??
it is a NVME
@@Britec09 A NVME is a SSD
It only trims, not defrags
Glarysoft has an all-in-1 utility suite that does both disk use analysis & shredding, among other things, or standalone apps to do it piecemeal. Their software updater for Windoze provides a reliable and trustable one-stop update repo for your other apps.
I was in a blog called "Blue Kiss". I was reading the first translated prologue when the computer freeze. So, I shut down and reboot. It requests a chkdsk and check the D Drive. When I used CCleaner, there was over 1Gb from Moxilla FireFox Temp Files. It takes 15 minutes to rid them off. I have never see a blog generating so much temp files. I was scared!
On the Drefrag tool, the partition goes from 7% to 3% fragmentation.
I installed a new NVME drive a few months ago and the same problem arose about a week later. I rebooted my PC and the drive was no longer full. It has happened about 4 times since. Very strange.
Programs that drop executable programs and packages and other crap in the AppData folder are one of my many pet hates- in my view its a security risk waiting to happen- as most of the time they are downloaded there and run without the user knowing and it doesnt only happen with windows 10, it breaks what I have stuck to from days of old with separation of data keeping the OS, Apps and Data, on separate spindles or partitions which not only enhances security but makes things faster and easier to find and manage, backup and recover - now it seems things are just piled in one place only separated by directories, which at the block level are nothing more than a label, which when the filesystem get near its limit has the potential for corruption and losing the lot
used to get this at work on windows 7 cab files are the worst of them. windows 10 has a feature called storage sense that cleans up the temp files if you set it to run every 30 days or so you will never see this again.
i personally thank you for fixing my issue, i now can download new games
This really helped me out, I found out AVG made 2 random files last month that took up 900gb. Deleted and have my HDD back
Did the Bleach Bit app helped? I have the same problem too. AVG took 880gb of my drive, and Bleach Bit doesn't seem to shred the folder. May I ask for your solution?
Thank you for this video it helped alot! I had 70GB's of old Adobe Premiere Cache slowing down my computer.
Couldn't you have just deleted the file normally through Windows Explorer and sent it to the Recycle Bin? Then, reboot the computer to make sure it would work and after you're satisfied everything was fine then permanently deleted it from the Recycle Bin?
wanted to make sure it was shredded and fully gone
@@Britec09 also recycle bin will not delete a file this large. Need to delete direct.
The file isn't a file that should be there. If the computer doesn't work with it gone, then it's time to reformat and start over.
To me, anytime I see that kind behavior I think virus. I just wipe the computer and then start over.
@@Britec09 is shredding basically overwriting the memory with zeros?
If you have a Dell the Dell Backup and Restore app can go wild and fill your drive with GBs of hidden files.
yeeah man I am facing the same issue can you tell how to fix that?
@@pranavtikar9901 same with me right now on my dell
Wow. Even though my issue was different and caused by an editing software, through Tree Size I could find those files to delete. Thankyou.
bro i love you so much you're the only one who solved my problem
That is strange? If you find out I’m sure you will tell us all in a video. Just want to thank you for all your helpful videos , you have helped this old man out many times.
Thanks for remembering me why I never use windows.
haha
lol...
Does MacOS have the same issue?
This is the part that i'm always getting out of my nerve like imagine you just left your drive a few days and latter on your local disk is full like you did not install any file or program but always full
did you have you antivirus working i dont mean only Defender ?
not yet, fresh install
Ohh! thank you so much! this video is the "One" that answered my question! 👌
Woke up this morning.. I actually emptied my Hard Drive last night, moved and deleted files... imagine my surprise when I turned my computer on this morning to see my hard drive absolutely full despite the fact that I deleted half of everything… Optimizing the drive, using the defrag tool on windows 11 fix the problem instantly, and I got all my space on the hard drive back
Dont know if you have done a video for it but I have a laptop that has 100% ram at all times and I figured it would need a few new parts being is an (older 2016 windows 7pro updated to windows 10) but even moving the mouse is slower then a junebug in molasses
Would it be an HP?
This video solved my problem. Thanks a lot
so exited to have my drive back thanks very much
Something weird is happening to mine.
I lose data like 2 GB or 1 GB, then it goes back
up. I've been trying to find videos to help, but
nothing comes up.
809 GB? Holy shit! :)) never seen that before :O
Hello, I have this problem on my 1TB HDD (D:) disk/drive. On this drive I can't see any other files than for example games or maps I made myself. There's nothing like Program Files etc. So I can't won't be able to even look for the file as all those maps that are on there are empty. Except for maybe 1 or 2 games in 1 of those maps. RIght now I have 1 game installed of about 100gb, but it says my D disk of 1TB only has 177 free space left... Any ideas as to how to fix this?
EDIT: there actually is a program files x86 in it, but all that is in that folder is 'Origin Games', which also has nothing inside of it. Even with hidden files on I just can't seem to find what's taking up so much space.
I have the same problem, my back up drive has 40GB of files that won't show? I don't know what to do about it?
Unable to update or uninstall WiFi driver and WiFi is also missing
Any help
Thanks. Treesize app and your video helped a lot.
My God!!!! You’re a live saver!!!! I literally never expected this would work but it did! Never expected but all the fuss was made because of cheat engine!! Never would’ve guessed.. thank you!!!’
Good video, many thanks!
Same thing is happening to me, I have quite A lot of files like that, I don't know what to delete, if it's safe or anything.
I've never had that happen to me but I do like the TreeSise App. I'll be using that. Thanks.
Yeah, its a great little app for finding large clusters of files.