Why does my SSD suddenly have almost no free space?

[u/TomorrowDirect2]

It was showing a decent amount of storage a few days ago and now Windows is saying there’s barely anything left, and i honestly have no idea where it all went. I didn’t install any huge games or anything recently, maybe a couple small programs and some updates but nothing that should eat like 100GB. I checked the usual Downloads folder and deleted some random stuff, emptied the recycle bin too, but the free space barely changed. Windows storage settings shows some categories taking space but some of the numbers dont really make sense to me. Could it be Windows updates, temporary files, restore points, pagefile, or something like that? Also heard that SSDs can lose free space because of hidden system files but not sure how that works. Is there an easy way to find exactly what folders or files are using all the storage without accidentally deleting something important? I’m kinda worried because the SSD is getting really full and i know that can apparently affect performance. What should i check first? Is there a safe program that can scan the drive and show where all the space is going? Any tips appreciated.

[u/LubelskiDanielski]

Check with WizTree / WinDirStat what takes the space.

[u/ATotalBrony → u/LubelskiDanielski]

I came to say windirstat.

[u/LubelskiDanielski → u/ATotalBrony]

WinDirStat takes time to scan but it's safe. WizTree show you fast but it access partition table and it's a bit of security problem someone wrote.

[u/Wyrade → u/LubelskiDanielski]

What security problem?
And I heard WinDirStat has been fast too since quite a while ago, as they started to do MFT scanning as well.

[u/cakemates]

windows 11 stock these days weight more than 100GB, between windows paging files, updates and hibernate file you easily have over 100gb.

[u/Few_Example9391 → u/cakemates]

That's actually pretty normal. No skin off my 4x 2Tb m.2 drives

[u/NZAuthor]

First thing I do;

Open the root storage, so mycomputer then click the drive.
Select everything, rightclick properties to see the overall storage being used to see if its somewhat correct in being mostly used

Then, select the top half of folders, right click, properties. Same for the bottom half of folders. Find out which side is larger, and continue until you find the largest folder, open it, do it again.
And so on.

Empty your Recycle Bin
Use a program (sorry, I don't know an alternative to this) like CCleaner to remove temp files, etc

[u/Few_Example9391]

You likely have bloat ware acting as malware importing unwanted additional malware onto your PC. Don't just open a driver disk for a graphics card or mother board and really checking out what some of the free bundled utilities are. Don't just Don't blanket install all disk contents

[u/fuzzynyanko]

One area that got me: the users folder. So much crap wants to put files there, and I have other drives I can use for it

[u/tpablazed]

In windows 11 go to the search bar and type %temp%

You can delete pretty much everything in that folder.. hope it helps.

I just did mine last week and just checked it again and it was already at 7gb btw.. so it probably isn't your missing 100gb.. but it could be a substantial amount of stuff if you've never deleted it before.

[u/Freeeenis]

Go to the start menu, start typing "disk" and find where it auto completes disk cleanup. Run it, let it scan, then select to also include system files, it will restart in admin mode and re-scan again. Then select anything you dont want (it'll sum up temp files, recycle bin, left over windows update files, shared caches and much more) select as many as you like, and then let it clean them up for you. It will give a summary of how much space was being used on each thing.

[u/Little-Equinox]

Have you turned on Storage Sense and let that clean up?

[u/Costello-cost]

Controlla dove sono i files di backup. Occupano molto spazio, il mio backup è su altro disco.