Hard Drive Full for No Reason Windows 10

Hard Drive Full for No Reason Windows 10
Hard drive mysteriously full? Here is a weird problem that just showed on on my windows 10 machine "hard drive says it's full when it's not" so I started to delete content from the hard drive, because it was in the red and it was still quite full. So I did some more troubleshooting and found the problem. I will show you what is taking up space on my hard drive on Windows 10. What was it? watch the whole video to find out.
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#HardDriveFull #Windows10 #FixWindows10 #TroubleshootingWindows10

[@Britec09]

Sorry re-upload, sound was missing. Thanks for watching :)

[@JadenYukifan28]

Speaking of Space, I have Avast free antivirus and every now and then a pop-up appears saying I have items slowing my computer down and yet there is barely a lot of GB in my C Drive

[@MercDaHaters]

@@JadenYukifan28 avast is a scam

[@JadenYukifan28]

@@MercDaHaters I have Avast and I have no issues with it

[@MercDaHaters]

@@JadenYukifan28 its wastes all of your disk space and slows your pc a crap ton

[@MercDaHaters]

@@JadenYukifan28 it doesnt even let you delete it, if you do it secretly runs in the background at full disk space

[@datazndood]

I always get scared that if I find an unidentified file like that and am about to delete that I'm going to delete something massively precious like family photos or videos.

[@apd_a4361]

same

[@pifre3051]

@Deep Moticons We are hoarders

[@kaitbunni]

@Deep Moticons it’s precious memories, don’t go around the internet telling people what they should and shouldn’t do, that’s so fucking bizarre to think you have to right to do that. you’re very strange for NOT thinking old family photos are important. secondly, you don’t know their life. they could’ve had the worlds greatest parents and they died and all they have to remember them is photos. you never know someone story so don’t be so quick to hop onto their case on why they think photos are so important.

[@lagsucks9255]

@Deep Moticons what a sad fucking life eh?

[@luzxy7830]

@Deep Moticons damn yea you for sure got no family

[@HAMAGTA5]

We are in an age of triviality and we no longer have a choice but to live with trivial generations, unfortunately. Millions of KZbinrs, millions of copied clips and ill-considered ideas. I spent a whole month searching for a solution to my computer problem, but I found nothing but triviality. As for your clip, my brother, if I had it in my power, I would nominate you from among billions of people because of your honesty and clear conscience. Thank you very much and I hope those who follow this clip will support you because we miss people like you

[@Robert08010]

Yes, let's praise him who hath said "deleteit" even though he doesn't know what it is.

[@clicketysplit1817]

this is great but you do not mention which directory or subfolder the Desktop folder is located.

[@zigmontmackonis6548]

This problem had me puzzled for a long time. This video put me on the right track, thanks to your approach. My problem was a folder 'c:\system recovery" (From a DELL product). Eventually I got rid of it. It had naught (zero) space when viewed in explorer but the folder was being incremented on a regular basis by some backup system. Eventually it accounted for about 85% of the space on the SSD.

[@mecbephlexis9710]

Thank u so much this was alot of help

[@Razor-re9xd]

Does this affect any thing in the computer if deleted

[@rvdh1964]

It is the backup utility from W7 which creates recovery points for system recovery. The system will create the folder again as long as you do not deactivate the W7 backup utility in programs and settings. Note the folder name is the same as the computer as the W7 backup utility was activated. So no glitch at all!

[@floridagirl386]

Can i delete the "recovery (D:) drive? Or do a "disk cleanup"?

[@thephilosopher7173]

I have the same problem but can't find the file that he sees. Is there another name for these backups?

[@KarlSkellenger]

i do not have W7

[@fran3014]

so how do we stop it from recreating the folder again?

[@mrawesomexd6969]

@@floridagirl386 I recommend you to do the D: disk disk cleanup

[@AmmyWulf]

Thanks, this helped a lot! I found some unnamed folders in the windows servicing folder which was the culprit and everytime I deleted a ton of videos photos and other files a day or two later it'd be completely full again.

[@pjelbro3492]

Same issue on my backup drive. Win 10 suddenly started using GB of space in a 0 byte file which had the same name as my laptop. As I do already mirror backup I reconfigured the Win 10 backup just to do the User directory (instead of the whole disc) and changed it to once a month as I don't normally store stuff in User. Now it works OK and plenty of space on my backup drive.

[@raysfan913]

This worked great man! Thanks very much for the helpful video.

[@cedieka5807]

will you be doing a follow up video on this? I really want to know why it got tons and tons of data on it but it displays as 0 bytes in properties.

[@noahriding5780]

Its a virus. When you scan with an antivirus it wants you to pay an extra fee. Well I can't prove it. But that's my conclusion based on where the bread crumbs lead. The company is hitting you up for protection fees.

[@andreu16]

@@noahriding5780 no it's not, it's the backup image folder, it's so big that it shows up at 0 bytes

[@muajin]

@@andreu16 i cant find that on the c drive.

[@porkyV2]

this happened to my sister's laptop 2 weeks ago. the c drive is red so i cut and paste her files on the more spacious d drive which freed up 14gigs. then when i was browsing, i looked in file explorer and saw the 14gig became 11, then 10. looked in windirstat and the c drive is somehow full of dll's. since i partitioned the c, i just reformatted.

[@iammeena6945]

Brian, have you got 'Auto Backup' switched on? If you have the auto backup is probably replicating itself rather than backing up only new files!

[@djdoolittle1315]

Wii Roms take up quite a bit of space 😉👍 wow! I have that desktop icon on my wireless drive. Thx Bri

[@Britec09]

Thanks

[@saltycomputer]

Thx I was getting annoyed every time my drive fills up for no reason. Btw you earned a new subscriber

[@arkanator6863]

I have this same problem that I have on my laptop and it is horrible I’m so glad I searched this up on KZbin your a life saver

[@motech2022]

me too thanks for sharing already supscribed

[@PCTechHub]

Great tip. Off to fire up my machine to see if I have it.

[@nancyvandunk678]

I, too, had mysterious SSD drive full but my files didn't add up. I'd done all the clean disc, compress, remove hibernation, delete old files, etc. and still only had 1G left. After viewing this, I started to look for files that were empty that might not have any reason. Looking for folders/files by size didn't work because, like you demonstrated it has 0 bytes. In the Settings > Storage, my "Other" files used much of my space. Clicking in there, I saw that an "Apple" subfolder under my User folder was very large, but when I clicked on the actual folder, it had 0 bytes. I deleted this, and BINGO! Just like you showed, it mysteriously had 35G hidden that freed up on my C:\drive. I've been scouring the web for a week now trying to figure this out. Thanks so much for sharing your experience!

[@steffenrathmannthamdrup4861]

It looks like you have activated Windows backup, long time ago!

[@Britec09]

No, I never used windows backup, also why was the icon desktop and showing as empty and 0 files? also zipped files named as backup, very strange.

[@JasonBassettThurrock]

@@Britec09 Hi Brian, all of the Windows image files I create look exactly the same - 0 bytes - but they restore fine. Seems to be a bug with Windows miscalculating it's image file sizes.

[@Datenkabel]

@@JasonBassettThurrock Yea Windows is lazy and terrible nowadays

[@JasonBassettThurrock]

@@Datenkabel Exactly - that's why I have not used Windows for about 15 years, except under duress. I'm quite happy with any Linux distribution.

[@AshokLekhra]

@@JasonBassettThurrock can you plzz help ? my c drive is full for no reason !! plz plz plz help meeee

[@dreamzproducxions3587]

thank you so much had this problem for days...Glad i found this vid

[@SupraManG]

Dang, this is fascinating! I'm checking my computer now! Thanks Brian for this find.

[@Britec09]

You're welcome.

[@GUBBIn1LL3R]

Couldn't that be some compressed or encrypted stuff from a shared network or from somewhere else? Did you try to decompress or decrypt it before deleting? Obviously a lot of files not allowed for the user to edit. Edit: Or maybe it's just more win10 bugs.

[@ipconfigearth102]

Which video recording software did you use?

[@CalmCal]

What a weird glitch, I suppose if it builds up over time its easy to overlook/hide 👍

[@lollmas1239]

i found out that, its made by microsoft and microsoft doesnt want you to know that there are some files that are mostly "not important". So they made it private as putting 0bites as a file.

[@realmccoy813]

Cool. This clued me in to what appears to be a bug...

[@rosiebeans]

I need a bit of help, I have absolutely nothing on my computer and it's saying there's loads of storage being taken up. I've combed through everything and deleted as much as I can, but there's still "low storage" !

[@barbiejake4801]

Thanks for that bit of information I had this nonsense with my bigger pc it drove me mad so I unplugged it and am waiting for my local council to come and dispose of it, after seeing you do this it’s made me change my mind, now I know why I can’t get anymore updates for windows 10 as it’s too full, I’ll be dealing with this when I get home from work today and on my laptop too, I really appreciate what you’ve just shown us it’s very informative thank you so much🙏🏽👍🏽😊

[@tvento]

Great video Bri. I'm going to bring this issue up at my computer club meeting tonight. Thanks.

[@j.swipes]

Figure out the cause?

[@Cool_Papa_Funk]

Tree Size saved the day for me. There was a log file from the Silhouette Cameo (vinyl cutter) that was over 1.3TB but was showing 0 in file explorer.

[@shanelamell2229]

WOW I have never had this problem but it is nice to know if it does happen. Thanks for sharing and have a nice day !!

[@0101wTV]

U saved me, idk even know y it should even say size on the right hand side, because it doesn't even tell you how big it is(at least for my PC anyway)

[@jonnyshoestring9368]

I know the properties said it was empty but wasn't it possible to stop the delete so that you could have a look to see some of the content?

[@inked3d]

thanks! I double clicked mine, and it allowed me to modify the backup settings

[@Nick-xs9zu]

holding your mouse on a file and see how many gbs theres in helpt me so much thanks :D

[@mrsnake1278]

If you hit properties of the file you can see how much storage it’s taking

[@Endorzan]

@@mrsnake1278 and then i almost jumped out of my gaming chair when i saw that one file was 256gb

[@jrrecordingstudio8546]

I almost wiped my drive not knowing what the hell was goin' on but thanks for this helpful video,👍👍👍

[@RockyAllenLane]

DESKTOP-9EP4AH8 is your Aconis 2020 backup directory.

[@woxwell3684]

I'm surprised tech savy britec missed that. Thanks for explaining what the video didn't.

[@jim3129]

@Britec09 Out of interest, would Disk Clean Up have worked?

[@Zeltster]

That’s crazy, i don’t know why that file was so big but it had 1.4tb on it for me I’ve been full on storage for months and had no idea why thank you for making this video

[@f23948]

great video as always thank you

[@VJFranzK]

I'd really want to know what that was before deleting it! I've got the low memory problem on my C drive, with Documents and other folders supposedly holding more than they are...

[@torukojinnn6331]

Thanks pal , so helpful

[@MaskedGEEK]

I highly suspect Windows backup as the culprit. You may set up a backup schedule in the past then forgetting about it. Taking up over 1TB is indicitive of a progressive backup with the occasional full system image. It's naming convection of "DESKTOP-9EP4AH8" is typical of Windows naming the backup as the name of your PC during installation of Windows. I could be wrong but from my experience that what I believe it is. And I also mention it could be a backup schedule you previously set and forgot because setting up a back using the Windows built-in backup tool requires a few steps to go through in order to fully set it up. Even if you just accepted all default options, Windows Backup will always try to select a drive with the most space and with the best redundancy. If all you have for backup drives are more hard drives, then it'll just select the drive with most space.

[@Britec09]

very strange, because I never use windows backup, I use Acronis true image which is installed on the system, its a strange one.

[@MaskedGEEK]

@@Britec09 I've just looked at my own backup file on my NAS. That's definitely a Windows Backup file structure you've got there. At 3:40 when you opened the image and saw the folders "Backup Set {Date} XXXXXX", with the obvious exception of the date stamp, my backup structure is the same as yours. Also in the same root folder with the image exists, you'll also see a 1KB file named "MediaID.bin" which is the reference file Windows uses to look at backups, that way Windows doesn't hammer your storage solution scanning all files unless you open them. It's a very weird glitch when the Properties windows shows 0 bytes used, as mine sits at 18.9GB so I can't explain that. But if I were you, check your backup settings from within the classic Control Panel (using the Settings app will eventually open the Backup and Restore (Windows 7) CPL anyway) and disable it since you use Acronis.

[@Britec09]

I have never used windows backup, so I am very surprised how all of a sudden I have backups

[@blastshieldaddiction]

@@Britec09 You, or I, may not have used Windows Backup, but Windows surely did. This would be fine for inexperienced people, but for people like me that manually back up data, I don't need this auto-bloat. I've been struggling with this for months. I have a game drive that I deleted 80% of the games because of the "mystery back up" filling up external Hard Drives. I'm elated and furious at the same time. Just recovered 400 gigs of space. The progress I made in those games is gone. One of the reasons I love Linux, nothing requires terabytes of space to operate, even 1:1 backups of the entire operating systems.

[@evanmartinez9430]

Earlier today while using my PC, I moved a game from one drive to another and began updating some of the games. Keep in mind that I had roughly 100GB left on each drive. Then all of a sudden, dor some reason it shows that I now have only 20GB on my main drive and 300GB left on my D drive. I lost over 60GB on my C drive and gained over 200 on my D drive! The storage seemed to have increased and decreased on both drives. What do I do!?

[@Luke-rj6bw]

i edited about 40 pictures on my computer. Lightroom. C: drive was at 60 gigs free. I export to another drive. and i delete all photos from lightroom. and all the sudden i have less than 20mb left on my c: drive. I have no clue what to do. i cant find any weird files or anything. Please help!

[@nandhakumars7800]

How you solved the problem

[@dcdotjah.]

@@nandhakumars7800i always see the questions but i never see a simple “yes” or “no”🤦🏾

[@Junngar]

Same bro help plsss

[@Junngar]

I have this exact problem too, no one understands my pain especially this is my new pc😢😢

[@33lex55]

Some time ago I saw a video, where you cleaned old update-files in Win10, but the video was very old; is that solution still valid for current versions of Win10 and Win7? My Win7 SSD has about 20 GB's of old update-files, but Windows Disc Cleaner does not seem to be able to delete them, and after that, any major update ends in tears... and then I need to reboot from my Acronis TI USB-stick to restore my (multiboot-)system to a previous state..

[@thomaswarren2699]

So, what's this software you mention that will search out the biggest files. It would take ages to look through all the folders in folders in folders; damn folderception!

[@seireiart]

I had an issue like that back in the Windows XP days and I found out it was a virus that causing that ended up filling up my hard drive.

[@adityapratap361]

Firstly I thought this video was like other videos but when I try to find out, it took some time but i was able to find a folder which was occupying 203 GB in C drive. Thank a lot🙂🙂

[@MhmdZK]

where can I find this folder I do not know where it is located in my device

[@syamsulnizar2114]

me neither, can someone help us?

[@elgoblino5342]

Mine is on the hard drive that i want to delete it from "D". Click on This PC while in your files. And from there click on the hard drive thats filled up. The file should be there.

[@alexandernygaard9798]

@@elgoblino5342 What, that doesn't narrow it down!

[@DiamaraldGaming]

window image backup

[@finitesound]

That file is made by Acronis, or sometimes Resilio. I did see an Acronis folder on the file directory in the video so that is likely it.

[@chocoteddyyy]

what is acronis? or resilio?

[@finitesound]

@@chocoteddyyy different file transfer or backup programs.

[@chocoteddyyy]

@@finitesound thanks!

[@kirusisalive960]

How did you check the GB while holding the mouse over it?

[@nurfatinnazilah9855]

Omg. thankyou so much! I've been searching for many years for how to solve this problem. luckily I found ur video!!

[@Mr3jj3]

Good to know this information thanks .

[@WW2Dude21]

i know that it have been 3 years on this vid but you helped me a lot tysm

[@iandocwatson]

great stuff it worked for me but my folder was different than yours thanks mate

[@mmadness7236]

Thank you so much worked perfectly

[@D.remedy]

I know when you upgrade to windows 10 it'll save your old windows version in a folder in case you wanna roll back.

[@Britec09]

Yeah that is a different thing.

[@selw0nk]

That's why you do a clean install of Windows 10.

[@MasterBroNetwork]

Update files from patches might be clogging up my C drive to the red.

[@john6580]

when i do it, the bar moves in reverse, it adds instead of reduces.

[@davescorneroftheworld1147]

What are D Backup? How were these files created?

[@magiicbeans6405]

yes but how do you get to the backup stuff?

[@xuhn9548]

What software can be used to help find things like this

[@ADHD_7712]

Brilliant, mate!

[@alexandernygaard9798]

Where is this file located. I just can't find it. Please help

[@qusayzidan5577]

did you find it?

[@b89oj]

It happens to me once every few months, the disk gets full for no reason whatsoever. But I haven't been able to find out the reason. One folder seems to be jam-packed with files but they don't show up anywhere.

[@adityaI007]

thanks dude it was helped me a lot

[@luxembourger]

I hope microsoft will come up soon with the first stable version of Windows.

[@jinxed4lyf763]

7 was pretty good but after that they been shitting stinky software’s like 8.1 and 10

[@sydneyishere323]

Be careful as you go around deleting random files especially if you have games it might be a game file a simple 200mb file can make you re-downloading all the 10+ gb game files

[@Britec09]

You should always be careful on what you delete off your hard drive that goes without saying

[@flstudiocodemastersejayrag6544]

@@Britec09 what annoys me the most is it keeps trying to add more programs without my permission. So then I have to keep scanning it with sfc /scannow chkdsk C: /f to stop the crap that keeps feeling it up. It could even be bitlocker🔓 doing it again. Sometimes I think windows 10 is a bit of a pain in the ass, I'm sorry to say. I think I'm starting to get really sick of windows 10. I think I'm gonna have to change over to Linux Min🖥️t📗, 🐧 I hope Linux Mint isn't as disappointing as windows 10. I wonder if Linux Mint is the same situation as C drive cos windows 10 is nothing like windows XP :service pack 3: 2002, or windows 7.

[@teleale1]

Hello Britec! I am having somewhat the same problem, my storage just randomly dissapears. So I would like to know how to kill a file like that that can take up a lot of storage.

[@KetchupColoredKnife]

Is there anyway to find the file without trial and error

[@asaroufeem]

Useful video, thanks. Unfortunately I'm having the same issue but cant seem to be finding that file unless its under a different name. Very frustrating. Afraid to even guess what file to delete. Any suggestions?

[@awnialholi72]

same problem

[@asaroufeem]

@@awnialholi72 My issue was a file in my Mcafee folder, called them and they fixed it with in mins. Good Luck!

[@JohnnyBoy-sb1tx]

@@asaroufeem how were you able to find out what file was the problem? (Sorry for asking almost a year later.)

[@invisibledreams3544]

Thanks brother because of you I just sit my ass in front of my computer for a whole hour to check every single file in my out of space disk and finally I found it because of you iam really thankful to you keep the good work

[@lollmas1239]

Hello, i have same thing on my laptop called DESKTOP, i am kinda worried so im gonna make it quick, if im gonna delete it will my games, files, etc will be deleted also and ill need to reinstall everything?

[@grizzlygaming7569]

great video really appreciate it got more space

[@debeeriz]

system image backup files show zero bytes but can contain many gigs of data, so dont store more than you need

[@karoomixd]

where do you find this folder?

[@veed2539]

I'm having the same problem on my Samsung external drive. It reads 860 MB free of 931 GB but I deleted like 50 GB of data from it and it still reads that. I unfortunately don't have that Desktop file that you deleted. Any help would be greatly appreciated

[@tridiots3681]

that is actually a ton of backups your computer automatically saves so that actually held up a f ton of space

[@Tollie314]

how would i remove it all

[@tridiots3681]

@@Tollie314 just delete the file

[@kimberlyguillen7324]

When windows does new update the older version is kept on your laptop but if not needed it can be trashed permanently

[@elgrandosmokio7136]

This is relatable, my C drive has 174 gbs of temporary files yet when I go to it, it’s basically empty just because

[@NortheastRacing]

Looks like a Windows 7 backup file.

[@Britec09]

yeah, but how? I have never used it.

[@NortheastRacing]

@@Britec09 That's a good question. I've had odd behavior from it before. I used to use it back when I had Windows 7. I then started using a 3rd party program to make backups. I deleted all backups made with the Windows backup program (which is the same Windows 10 still uses), and even though it showed as completely gone (there were no files remaining om the partition), the drive was nearly full, as it was before removing them. I ended up having to format the partition to regain the disk space. I'll never use Windows utility to backup ever again.

[@rahul-qm9fi]

Where is the backup file?

[@emilywhite5546]

I know nothing about computers, how do you know what files you can delete? I see so much stuff in my drive but have no clue what it does or what will happen if I delete it. I just got a new pc and I can't download anything because my drive is already full...?

[@richardradatsz3848]

I'm having the same issue on my laptop but got uni work on there that I don't want deleting, if I did this would it be affected?

[@Josh-ls5pd]

What are the programs to find big amounts of data?

[@ez6314]

I found something similar but it was a folder titled “windowsapp” that said 0-bytes

[@ashlingley6569]

thank you so much, my computer was losing storage like crazy and i wasn't downloading anything. thank u for this, it helped loads. got me 90 GBs back after deleting one file titled "off-line pages" or something like that

[@May-zn3my]

Was it off line web pages? I have it too and I'm not sure if thats it or not.

[@Docasxd]

Thank you! Apparently windows apps folder don't show there weight, it's solved now!

[@gavinrichard1990]

Thank you!!! Luckily i found this video before deleting my games

[@barbiejake4801]

Hello can you tell me what file holds the file called desktop?

[@viviendanskin4554]

Thank you so much for this video it worked now i can get back to work thanks to you

[@Ghostlymist]

had a file named "skjyck" that suddenly took 65 gb off my c drive. i deleted it and it went back to the original size i had before... thank you

[@heneral_bbx4536]

Thank you very much for this

[@markgarcia137]

This dosnt dellete some aps like adobe photoshop installed if i delette it?

[@motech2022]

i have the same situation but the question is how that program got there ?

[@PLENK4]

I have some folder with lots of papers named "Data" and they each take 1gb and i have 100gb of those should i delete it?

[@godschild5587]

go to c:\windows\temp and select all and remove everything, this one worked for me.

[@elliotha3286]

Where is this huge file I cant find it

[@Monsiemage]

For anyone out there that just reset windows and has a drive showing a lot of file usage "had a 1tb SSD showing I only had 400gb to use" It was all tied to old files that were not even really there anymore, like my old steam library was 590gb of the usage. Never had old files stick around after reset, pretty sure they were gone but the hardrive had space allocated for what used to be on it

[@megcaton]

I'm having this exact same issue but not a folder by that name. It's driving me crazy because I can't figure it out.

[@LifewithFoods]

I think that's the windows backup folder, correct me if I'm wrong...but I have a different problem, I am not getting any solution anywhere, I have a partitioned drive, which is completely empty, but shows filled up, there's literally nothing in it.

[@durz_3769]

Literally built a new pc and almost all my storage is used up

[@maximecoste7317]

Thank you!

[@floridagirl386]

Hi can i clean up my recovery D: drive? Im afraid.