Solid State Drive Problem (overload)

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For the last three years I have been running Windows 10 Pro on a Dell desktop with two drives. (C:) a 200 GB solid state drive. (D:) a 1,000 GB old fashioned spinning drive. My solid state drive is running out of room (Yes, trim is enabled) I think the problem rests with the fact I download a dozen or so science / math papers in the pdf format on a daily basis. Even though I delete these files, I think they are still on my solid state drive. Am I right? How do I free up space on my solid state drive? Advice? Suggestions?

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I’d Dnload the Portable Ver of WizTree app that gives you a Detailed Breakdown of WHAT is on your Drive. The Largest Folders’ members will show What is using up Capacity AND categories you may recognize as the culprit(s)..  A Scan of either Drive takes only seconds ….

The experts can better comment after you look at your SSD Members layout ……..

https://www.diskanalyzer.com/download

W10 Pro 22H2 / Hm-Stdnt Ofce '16 C2R / Macrium Pd vX / GP=2 + FtrU=Semi-Annual + Feature Defer = 1 + QU = 0

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I had someone in this pickle and it was simply that they didn’t realise they needed to empty the recycle bin to actually remove the files. They used a very old version of Picassa, I think – whatever it was, it downloaded their entire (expensive) camera content to a folder in the pictures folder (folder name=date) every time they connected the camera for the first time each day, so they has massive duplication issues if they kept the files, so they just highlighted the folder and pressed delete when done.. and thus had a massive recycle bin disk usage as they used the camera daily… for months.. with a 16Gb card.. quite full.. and they wondered why the machine was getting slow to show the files on the camera..

Also worth noting cleanmgr “isn’t supported” anymore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_Cleanup#:~:text=Disk%20Clean%2Dup%20(cleanmgr.exe)%20is%20a%20computer%20maintenance%20utility%20included%20in%20Microsoft%20Windows%20designed%20to%20free%20up%20disk%20space%20on%20a%20computer%27s%20hard%20drive.%20It%20has%20now%20been%20deprecated%20and%20replaced%20with%20a%20modern%20version%20in%20the%20Settings%20app%2C%20although%20it%20still%20exists%20as%20a%20legacy%20tool%20in%20Windows.)

just type storage into the task bar search.. use the top link (be sure of what you need to remove though..)

A snapshot attached shows there must be more than 10 PDFs taking up space.. I have the setting off as I have a SSD and the clutter is too small to be worth frequent cleaning but I also have the 21h2 media, and deployment toolsets, and images of various other PC and non PC media and general junk in that usage.

Could it be your on an older Windows version and the current build (or Windows 11) is downloading? might be worth checking what Windows update is doing..

 

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Download the free portable ‘100 largest files finder‘ app.

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Like the OP, I have limited space on my SSD C: drive (256GB) and keep a ‘bulk storage’ 3TB hard drive as D.  I should note that I upgraded the D: drive from 1TB to 3TB several years ago due to running out of space.  I still have more than 1TB available.

My solution is simple…I simply move items that I haven’t used in a while from My Documents to a folder on the hard drive.  My goal is to maintain about 100GB of free space on the C: drive.  Of course, the ‘key’ to the whole thing is to regularly clone each drive to like type and sized drives.   That way, if either fails, all I need do is swap drives (and copy any ‘newer’ files from old drive) and I’m back up and running in no time.

Why the 100GB free space?  I sometimes spend days scanning old slides and then editing them with Lightroom and/or Photoshop.  Having all Windows and Adobe work files on the SSD keeps things moving quickly.  When I’m done with all the slides, they get moved to the D: drive.

But perhaps the biggest reason for the 100GB of free space is Windows updates.  When moving from one release to the next, especially when I upgraded Win 7 to Win 10, it wanted massive amounts of available space on the C: drive.  On my laptop (10GB free space on 256GB SSD), the Win 7->10 upgrade forced me to remove about 50GB worth of downloaded videos before the upgrade would begin.  A couple weeks ago, I upgraded from 21H1 to 21H2 on both and think it required about 20GB to save the old version of the upgraded Windows as well as temporary work space during the upgrade.  I had to clear space on the laptop again.

Being a techie, I also routinely delete useless ‘growing’ folders that Windows as well as browsers and other apps ‘accumulate’ through use, but never clean out.  Log files and history files are prime culprits.   Although the Windows ‘disk cleanup’ utility helps, it pales in comparison to any of the multiple ‘system cleanup’ apps available that make it easy to accomplish this.  In my opinion, the best of them (I’ve used 3 or 4 through the years) gets about 80% of the useless junk.  For $20-30 annual subscription fee, I think it’s worth it.

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I hope that your 3TB drive is not the infamous 3TB Seagate Barracuda (ST3000DM001) hard drive which is known to fail.

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bratkinson wrote:

My solution is simple…I simply move items that I haven’t used in a while from My Documents to a folder on the hard drive.

I never used My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, My Videos, Downloads..on drive C:
I created and use these folders on Drive D:

2 users thanked author for this post.

GoneToPlaid, windbg

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HenryB wrote:

My solid state drive is running out of room (Yes, trim is enabled)

TRIM has nothing to do with space reclamation, it is an SSD performance management tool.

I use TreeSize free to view space use on drives. It also allows you to delete those files.

cheers, Paul

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I too have a SSD C:\ drive and a  1 TB SATA internal drive.  I also have a 3TB external drive and a 1 TB external quick connect drive.

The C:\ is only 128 GB so I keep only Windows and installed programs on it.  The internal 1 TB SATA is for all data (documents, downloads, photos, emails, and some programs).  The 3 TB external is one of 2 that I swap out for backups and long term storage.   The 1 TB quick connect contains my personal and health records and is connected only while in use.

I have to watch my space on the 128 GB  C:\ due to its size.  When it gets too large I move large programs to another drive and use symlinks to keep the program running.  I’ve recovered over 60 GBs using symlinks.

HTH, Dana:))

 

HTH, Dana:))

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You can also recover space by clearing files in winsxs.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-reclaim-space-reducing-size-winsxs-folder-windows-10

1 user thanked author for this post.

GoneToPlaid

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Thanks. Your suggestion worked.

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@OP, my first thought was, when was the last time you cleared redundancy and superseded from you componentstore? Therein lays a quandray of space on w!n10, you’d be surprised at the space regain if it’s never done before 😉

Note post times of this post and #2424253 , this was posted prior to Alex’s trolling with a link to imply he had thought of this first. LOL

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I have no idea as to what you are describing. Please lower your level down to the comprehension of a common person. redundancy? superseded?  componentstore? Duh!

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How many gigabytes in a quandray?

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If you use sleep mode, Windows will  create a huge hiberfil.sys file.

Turning off sleep mode and deleting this file will gain and keep a lot of space on the drive.

 

HTH, Dana:))

HTH, Dana:))

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My take on what Microfix suggests is initially to check what the store is doing by using the following in an elevated CMD prompt..

dism /online /cleanup-image /AnalyzeComponentStore

My attached report shows nothing odd and that I generally don’t bother cleaning up until I need the space (it ran after Windows update on the 8Th.) .. generically to do that you would use

DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup

but if you have a running backup you can use to get Windows right and you back up your data every time you use the machine then the /resetbase is a no way back eviction of all the patch related items – you won’t be able to remove any patches installed prior to that operation either… (a sort of patch equivalent of the spsuperseded switch which went out with service packs..) for the (verbose) usage / switches for this start with:

dism /online /cleanup-image /?

 

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