All the Hard Drive space on my C Drive being taken up by Windows 10

[BubbaRobot887]

Okay so I can't find anything on Youtube or any other site including Microsoft's own website that addresses what is happening to my computer. The C drive on my computer now has nothing on it but my windows 10 install, this drive is 1TB in size and yet it keeps getting taken up by windows ten until there is no space left. Every few hours the storage space goes down by around 11GB until I am down to 1MB of free space, I keep deleting files but it keeps happening, I have made every adjustment recommended by Microsoft and every tech site and video that I can find to save hard drive space and this keeps happening, soon I will not be able to even run my computer.
Anyone have any idea why a Windows 10 install would suddenly demand infinite hard drive space and hog a whole 1TB of a C Drive.

I am out of options and am really hoping someone here can help save my computer.

Thank you for your time.

 

[herefortheactualthreads]

have you tried reinstalling it, or trying to run Linux via USB?

 

[Overly Serious]

Something must be spewing out data. Your first task is to figure out what the Hell is taking up all that space. I suggest two immediate approaches.

The first is to simply open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Delete once then select it) and under the Process tab, click on the Disk column to see what if anything is doing a lot of heavy writing to disk. If you don't see the full details with separate columns, click on "More Details" which you'll see near the bottom of the window.

The second approach I might recommend is to install WizTree (https://diskanalyzer.com/) or WinDirStat (https://windirstat.net/). Both are utilities that will show you what is using up your harddrive space.

Either of these two approaches might yield some useful info.

EDIT: (more)

I guarantee that Windows the OS doesn't need 1TB of disk space. Runaway torrents? Misconfigured backup getting recursive?

If your system becomes unusable and you need to analyse the disk from outside of Windows, you can make a bootable Linux on USB. But do you have BitLocker configured on your C drive?

Also, you say you "keep deleting files but it keeps happening". Are the files you are deleting coming back? Or you're just deleting more and more and not knowing what is using up the freed space and you're running out of things to delete?

 

[Ultrapenguin]

Could it be something related to some sort of automatic backup process? The fact it keeps occurring at regular intervals is a little suspicious. Can't you tell more precisely where all this data's getting stored?

In any case the above is a good question. Have you tried an OS reinstall or repair install? That's a pretty routine process, there's no reason you should lose your files or computer.

 

[Greenday87]

Something must be spewing out data. Your first task is to figure out what the Hell is taking up all that space. I suggest two immediate approaches.

The first is to simply open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Delete once then select it) and under the Process tab, click on the Disk column to see what if anything is doing a lot of heavy writing to disk. If you don't see the full details with separate columns, click on "More Details" which you'll see near the bottom of the window.

The second approach I might recommend is to install WizTree (https://diskanalyzer.com/) or WinDirStat (https://windirstat.net/). Both are utilities that will show you what is using up your harddrive space.

Either of these two approaches might yield some useful info.

EDIT: (more)

I guarantee that Windows the OS doesn't need 1TB of disk space. Runaway torrents? Misconfigured backup getting recursive?

If your system becomes unusable and you need to analyse the disk from outside of Windows, you can make a bootable Linux on USB. But do you have BitLocker configured on your C drive?

Also, you say you "keep deleting files but it keeps happening". Are the files you are deleting coming back? Or you're just deleting more and more and not knowing what is using up the freed space and you're running out of things to delete?

+1 to WinDirStat, has helped me a ton. If you have another hard drive mount it and install the program on there.

 

[Overly Serious]

Do you have any less common uses for your Windows box? Are you a developer? Do you have Docker or Virtual Machines? Run a torrent client? Use WSL?

Get us the answers from my suggestions above if you can first - those will help us help you.

 

[Twinkie]

could be your CAB files, check your temp folder

 

[#FF0000]

I have this exact issue too, so it's nice to know I'm not the only one. I'm gonna see if these solutions work for me.

 

[SIGSEGV]

Install Kubuntu

 

[Overly Serious]

I have this exact issue too, so it's nice to know I'm not the only one. I'm gonna see if these solutions work for me.

Well they're not solutions - they're basic questions which when answered should help us know what the solution is. I'm done for now. I'll reply when the OP returns and provides more information. Pointless throwing out ideas when basic checks have not been done.

Install Kubuntu

Right. Rather than fix a likely easily resolvable problem, OP should switch to an entirely different OS.

The Sun rises, the rains fall, and there is always someone who says "install Linux" every time someone asks for help with Windows.

 

[SIGSEGV]

Right. Rather than fix a likely easily resolvable problem, OP should switch to an entirely different OS.

The problem is easily resolvable by switching operating systems.

The Sun rises, the rains fall, and there is always someone who says "install Linux" every time someone asks for help with Windows.

Seethe harder Wincel.

 

[Tablet County]

Finally! A situation where telling somebody to delete system 32 would actually solve their problem!

 

[Slav Power]

I'd suggest using WizTree over WinDirStat, simply because WinDirStat, even the newest dev version compiled from source, manually indexes all the files and it's painfully slow. The current stable version is even slower. WizTree just looks up the NTFS index so it finishes up much, much faster. Takes a few seconds to finish looking everything up. I don't know why WinDirStat never implemented that.

Install Kubuntu

I agree, it's a perfect solution since the moment you try to install a custom theme it'll just rm -rf / your OS, so you won't have to worry about disk space ever again.

 

[Queen Aleena]

It sounds like you fucked up the partition process somehow. Maybe Windows is not actually filling up your drive with a 1TB cache, but it believes that's happening because the small amount of space you used to partition or image your operating system is erroneously telling you there's no drive space.

 

[Demonslayer1776]

I once encountered this on a PC and it was caused by the search index growing infinitely. I ended up having to reinstall windows

 

[2ndBest]

Check your storage in the settings, it should calculate what’s taking up all the data.

 

[peachlover669]

https://artixlinux.org/

or, if you suck monkey dicks

https://endeavouros.com/

 

[BubbaRobot887]

Thanks for the advice.
I will try this tomorrow and let you know what happens.
I have been working with Windows based PCs since 96 and have never encountered anything like this before. I really hope I don't have to reinstall windows.
I have Linux on my laptop but I have windows on my gaming/video editing desktop because there just are not any Linux versions of the games and programs I have collected over the years so I would like to keep using Windows if I can so I can still use my old software.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I can't find anything on Youtube or any other site including Microsoft's own website

Finding stuff online in Current Year can be frustrating.

 

[Shig O'nella]

Check the size of your windows installer and updates folders. They grow massively, everything is kept, and you can't delete the contents easily.
Run disk cleanup and you can at least compress the shit some. A far better option is to shift those folders to another drive completely and drop a symbolic link into the Win directory instead.

I had a simliar problem with the windows directory constantly and rapidly growing - it was updates being downloaded several dozen times due to a shitty connection, and everything was kept.