I've been experiencing an odd issue where several of my computers are indicating that the C drive is full, despite not being the case. When I checked using WinDirStat, it shows about 60.4 GB is being used on a 235 GB drive. However, Windows settings claim that 155 GB is utilized in the "System & Reserved" section. Has anyone else encountered this problem?
3 Answers
Did you check the permissions for user profiles in C:Users? Sometimes even with admin rights, you might not have access to view all the files in these folders, which could create confusion about storage space.
It might not just be a bug. Have you considered that the System & Reserved space could be taking up more room than you expect? I noticed my own system shows around 73 GB used there due to system files, swap space, temporary files, and hibernation files. Running a disk cleanup might help clear some unnecessary files too! How much have you managed to free up?
It sounds like there might be a miscommunication between the tools you're using. Is WinDirStat showing the same as your drive properties? Sometimes it's these tools that misreport disk usage. Also, could the files in "System & Reserved" be correlated with specific folders? Have you checked that? If these reserve files show up in the settings, it might give you a clearer direction.
Yeah, I double-checked everything and even right-clicked to check properties on files. Everything looks normal, but the drive still shows used space in ways I can't trace.
I ran disk cleanup and only got back about 4 GB, which is frustrating since I'm still at 98% full! I checked the usual suspects for file use and they don't seem excessive.