Where has my SSD space gone?

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A few months back I replaced my HDD C: drive with a 240Gb SSD.

I first transferred my entire “Library” to another drive by changing the system Location of each Library and letting the System (Windows 8.1) move all the files. That reduced the size of my C: drive files to about 110 GB. I then cloned the this HDD to the new 240 GB SSD which resulted in a new drive with about 50% used as file space and about 50% used as free space. I changed the boot sequence and basically removed the old “C:” drive from operation. I have retained it as a bootable drive “in case”.

Everything went smoothly and my system now boots and shuts down very fast and programs load and execute fast. I am mostly pleased.

I use Norton 360 as my AV and management software so the OS does not attempt to defrag the disks and Norton automatically treats the SSD as an SSD should be treated for fragmentation – Trim Command and all that.

A couple months later, I noticed the “Used” space had increased significantly and much more than could be accounted for by new programs etc. I cleaned up all the trash and temp files and recovered some but I still had about 20 GB more “Used” space and less “Free” space than I had initially. More time passed and the amount of Free space continues to decline but I sometimes recover some of it – sometimes by cleaning up trash and at other times for no apparent reason.

A few days ago, I decided to really investigate before I was so short on Free space that I would have difficulty doing anything. At the time, I was down to 84GB Free. I fired up a utility called WinDirStat which gives a visual map of how space is used. I found a couple of old Games that I removed but otherwise everything looked good except for one large file called hiberfil.sys but even it would not account for the amount of free space I have lost.

In searching around in WinDirStat, I found an option to display the Free space as well as the “Unknown” space. To my surprise, there is a very large chunk of the drive that not a file and not Free space either. WinDirStat calls it “Unknown” and it is currently 23GB and probably accounts for the space I am losing. WinDirStat has no data on it other than its size – no name, type, dates, status, etc. Visually, it is represented as one big block called “Unknown” without any sub-blocks as a directory would have.

I suspect this all may be part of the collecting of NAND areas that must be cared for by the Trim command but I am not sure. I hope this is the case and the growth of this “Unknown” area can be ignored. Can anyone offer an explanation?

In addition, and as a separate issue, I discovered this new SSD C: drive is set to not allow Indexing. Should the C: drive be Indexed or left not Indexed?

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If your ‘libraries’ are all on another drive, there’s little reason to enable Indexing on C:.

Fully uninstall Norton (most of it is duplication of what’s built in to W8.1 anyway, the remainder is mostly snake oil and scareware, use SymNRT afterwards to ensure it’s all removed), enable Windows Defender and the Windows firewall, install WinPatrol for warnings/control over system changes and Malwarebytes MBAM Free for weekly scans.

Hiberfile is used to hold your loaded data whilst the machine is in Hibernate mode, if you don’t use Hibernate, you can disable it and remove the file.

Have you checked in disk Management to see whether the ‘Unknown’ is actually a chunk of unpartitioned space?

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Chimo,

I’d also check your system restore points to see how much space they are taking up. HTH :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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RetiredGeek;

You may have hit the nail. I have Restore configured to utilize 31.5 GB (14% of drive as I recall) and there are a dozen or so Restore Points taken which are reported as occupying 25.5 GB. That number (25.5 GB) is close enough to the 23.2 GB that WinDirStat reports as “Unknown” to make me suspect they are the same block of space. Besides, I cannot find any other space that is explicitly specified as Restore Point space.

I will keep an eye on it to see how large it grows. Many thanks.

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satrow;
I do use the Hibernate function rather often. I have the Power button on the front panel configured to send the system into Hibernate. If I need to leave the system for a few hours, I can simply push the Power button and walk away. Repowering the system is very quick and I need not go through a Save/Load of all my open applications.

This “Unknown” block is not unallocated space since 100% of the SSD is configured as a single drive “C:”.

As for Norton, there is no way I would be so foolish as to trash a smoothly working and paid subscription that has six months to run for the dubious pleasure of installing, configuring, scheduling and maintaining at least five separate programs that Norton does as a single seamless, and largely fully automated, program.

But, I thank you for your consideration.

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System Restore files are stored in a hidden folder called System Volume Information on the root of the C drive. To see this folder, you need to configure Control Panel > Folder options view tab to:
Show hidden Files…..
uncheck Hide System Files…

You can control the amount of space reserved for System Restore via:
Windows key + Pause Break or Control Panel > System
Click on System Protection
Click on Configure Restore Settings

Jerry

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You can also selectively delete system restore files using CCleaner.

How about a windows.old file?

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Use a utility like SpaceSniffer, or some similar tool, to examine the disk’s used space
to make a better determination as to what is taking up so much space.

It’s more likely that you are not separating as much personal data from the OS as you think you are.

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My Samsung SSD has a default setup option called “Over Provisioning”. The help window that opens when you hover over “over provisioning help” states:

“Over Provisioning sets aside extra free space on the SSD for the controller to use to increase SSD performance and lifespan.” (Users must disable it if they do not wish to “lose” any disk space).

In my case, it utilises 4Gb, quite a significant amount IMHO.

My Rig: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core CPU; ASUS Cross Hair VIII Formula Mobo; Win 11 Pro (64 bit)-(UEFI-booted); 32GB RAM; 2TB Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD. 1TB SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 NVME SSD; MSI GeForce RTX 3090 VENTUS 3X 24G OC; Microsoft 365 Home; Condusiv SSDKeeper Professional; Acronis Cyberprotect, VMWare Workstation Pro V17.5. HP 1TB USB SSD External Backup Drive). Dell G-Sync G3223Q 144Hz Monitor.

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