A week ago, my SSD had about 250 GB of used space. Somehow, roughly 600 GB of additional storage is now occupied, but I can't find the files by browsing through my usual folders. What's the best way to track down what is consuming the space?
3 Answers
Check the Public user-profile folders for unusually large .tmp files. Some applications leave huge temporary files there. Delete them only after confirming they are not currently in use, and skip any files Windows refuses to remove.
Try scanning the drive with a disk-usage tool such as WinDirStat or WizTree. These show the largest folders and files visually, which makes it much easier to locate hidden or misplaced data.
If you play games, check shader caches, download folders, and temporary files. You can also right-click folders, open their properties, and work your way down until you find where the storage is being used. A game or program stuck in a loop could also be endlessly generating logs, especially if it is printing an error hundreds of times per second. On a shared computer, someone downloading a large game could explain the entire increase too.
A 600 GB shader cache appearing overnight seems unlikely. A runaway log file or repeated error output would be a more plausible explanation if no one else downloaded anything.
Thanks, that helped me find what was taking up all the space.