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One of the OS I frequently use is Windows 7. Unfortunately I recently ran out of partition space (partition D:, which has total size 668GB). I uninstalled some big, unused applications. However I still only have 1.92GB free out of 668GB total.

It's easy to estimate that the total sum of the programs in the Add/Remove Programs section is even less than 300GB.

When I selected all folders and files on the D: partition and clicked Properties I saw this:

enter image description here

The total size of files on this partition is 131GB.

Something is wrong. What's wrong and why?


PS. I have unchecked in Windows' options hiding system's folders.

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  • But you still don't have the permission to read the file information from "System Volume Information" folder, right? Therefore they are not included in your calculation.
    – Robert
    Jun 15, 2012 at 12:07

5 Answers 5

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Use TreeSize to see where all your space is going. It's a really good tool and it's free. You can use it to see which folders are taking up the most space, and lots of other filtering and viewing options.

There is an Admin shortcut I think which will show you any folders that are system protected, just remember to run it as admin!

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  • WinDirStat is a nice alternative and also free (GPL).
    – speakr
    Jun 15, 2012 at 12:46
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The folder which name you blurred, it contains the Backup content. And, it's also normally inaccesible to normal apps, so you don't see it's size when you select them. Go to Backup and Restore then delete some old backups. It could reach hundreds of gigabytes easily. There will be two backups, one is the system images, containing data required to return your system and apps, and the other one is data backups.

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  • Correct! This folder weighed ~600GB. In its properties there was written that there is no files inside (0bytes). Thanks a lot! ;) Jun 22, 2012 at 22:20
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Delete old system restore points(and create one afresh :) ).
They tend to eat up a lot of space..

Use Ccleaner to clean the drive.

Use a third party file manager to visualize disk usage for various folders.

I don't think anyone is noob enough these days not to know that desktop and my documents eat up windows drive space.
but still, clean up desktop and my documents/music/pictures.

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Run Scandisk because your hard drive can often mask free space as used space because of drive errors.

Look At Virtual Store and see if you are running any virtual machines. If you do run them then those suckers can blow through your storage because they need to have their own environment requirements.

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For people who don't want to download a 3rd party tool, here are many tips to free up space quickly Free up disk space on Windows

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