Posted on 07/09/2026 3:18:40 PM PDT by LouAvul
I opened up duckduckgo which said my available space on my computer was low. My C drive is 459 GB. This A.M. it was 5.41 GB free of 459 GB.
Now it's 2.59 GB free of 459 GB. Something's going on. I have and use CCleaner 7 and Malwarebytes. Windows Defender also. This computer never even reaches half full of the 459. I've also used disc cleanup.
Ideas? thnx
I wouldn’t do PC if you paid me. I’ve used Apple computers for over 30+ years, and have always gotten my money’s worth. All I’ve ever seen here on FR for the past almost 29 years that I’ve been here, is PC users posting threads, asking for help with some problem or with their computers. You get what you pay for.
Tree size is free and will show you what files folders you have. Then delete the un needed. Do you download Amazon movies? This can occupy 30GB and more
“You get what you pay for.”
Not in your case. You over paid because you hate Windows. I use Linux Mint too. You could buy a new 300$ 15.6” display laptop with crap 8gb ram, slap Mint on it and do all the internet surfing you like. End. You do you.
Gee, golly. I was impressed by that!
Oh, My!
Talk about bringing back memories.
I was teaching computers, ESL, and GED back in the 1990s. A lot of LEGAL immigrants.
I will never forget when we purchased computers with the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Pentium Processor.
The Cat's Meow
The Bees Knees
I still have unopened 8 terabyte external drives from Frys Electronics. Only would purchased them on super duper sales (another reason they went out of business).
As usual, a lot of great advice on Freerepublic. Some of it I knew. All of it is very useful.
I had the same issue. Windows update used more than half my terrabyte drive. Turn off windows update automatic updates. Then reboot.
I've already used ccleaner and disk cleanup and the "delete" feature on Internet Explorer.
If I pay $1100 for an Apple computer and it lasts me 11 years or more without any problems, then I feel I got my money’s worth from it. At least you won’t see me posting on FR asking for help because Windows stopped working.
Is “Hibernate” mode activated? You didn’t say which OS you were running.
Go to Windows Explorer and then to the Recycle Bin directory. In that directory, see if you have sub-folders that have names that almost appear to be dates, like “S-1-5-18”. They may have a couple dozen numbers that follow.
These can be deleted completely by hitting the Shift and Delete keys together.
Yes, our suspicions too. 🕸️
Sorry. It’s win 11 and it doesn’t have the hibernate mode. thnx
I have recently had two instances of similar behavior.
I use Windows 7 Backup and Restore writing images to a secondary drive. The backups covered several years but, suddenly there was insufficient space for another backup. Using that app to examine the space usage, I discovered that, while historic backups were 20 GB, most recent were 200GB. Needless to say, I deleted a lot of old backups and adjusted what was being saved every week.
Also, a few months ago, my C drive was severely low on available space. It took a lot of digging to discover there were multiple “log files” being written every minute. I no longer remember all of the circumstances, but it had to do with Onedrive, which I turned off. I found huge space usage, thousands of files, under user/myidentity/AppData/Onedrive.
I hope this saves someone some grief.
Consider yourself lucky.
My laptop at work recently suffered a similar fate, but my available capacity was just a hair over 5 MB. Yeah.
The final straw was over the long weekend when I cleared up enough space to claw back just under 2 1/2 gigs.
Came back from the long weekend and it was 5MB. That’s 3 days of being in sleep mode, no use, no updates.
After some investigation, I concluded that I had over 70 gigs of hidden files. Even our IT couldn’t get them exposed.
This particular laptop also had an issue with conflicting accounts (work vs. my personal email). Something got screwed up after a prior update.
When IT unhitched my personal account from the laptop, BAM:
Over 70 gigs available.
Even they have no clue.
IMHO the culprit in my case is Win11.
Sorry that I can’t offer any specific advice for your very similar problem.
I tried to click the link but got this message: “The requested document does not exist on this server.”
affected PCs running Windows 11 versions 24H2 and 25H2
Usually, I get that kind of usage from saving DVD video files [4 or so Gb]
It’s easy to check if you’re affected: Just open Settings, System and then Storage. Next, click on “Show more categories” and look for “System & reserved.” If the “System files” category contains more than around 100GB you’re likely to be affected.
I checked mine, and I’m not affected.
Let me know if you checked.
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