SSD Space disappears randomly

[Allmightyballs]

Purchased a new desktop with a 256g SSD & 1T HD. Downloaded Diablo 2, Steam and World of Warcraft. I had 176g on the SSD after all of that. It stayed that way for months. I started recording games and after moved those game recordings to an external 4T hard drive. 

 

I stayed off the PC for about a week. Once back on for daily use, I noticed the SSD had dropped from the 176g to 90g. Ran disk clean up, checked for game recordings I may have missed but found nothing. After about 2 hours of searching forums and reading on the subject I had lost 4-5 gigs. 

 

Is there something Im overlooking that could be taking up space even during idle? Is there a way to check whats taking up the space without using 3rd party software? 

[SenKa]

Do you have a windows.old folder? Deleting that can save quite a bit of space.

 

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-delete-the-windows-old-folder-from-windows-10/

[meenmeen1103]

WinDirStat is great for this situation. It is third party, but works great, and very light.

[Tedster]

18 minutes ago, meenmeen1103 said:

WinDirStat is great for this situation. It is third party, but works great, and very light.

Download page for that:

https://windirstat.net/download.html

 

I'd also recommend SpaceSniffer, downloadable here:

http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/download.html

[TechyBen]

Some games also use a large cache now. Some recording software have cache. Some browsers also might hit a cache error and make massive file dumps...

 

So as others have said, get a visual/file checker that can let you know what is taking up the space.

[Allmightyballs]

No windows old file which kind of surprised me, my other PCs all have it & I had to delete those before.

 

Thanks, Ill check the Windirstat. Others recommended Tree something but I couldn't get the link to work.

 

@TechyBen I did not know that but Ill look into it. What made this so weird is how I stopped playing games & recording for a week or 2 then once I turned the PC back on its like my SSD has become a crappie Samsung battery and is quickly depleting 

[SenKa]

WinDirStat is incredibly useful, to echo what others have brought up. Im actually using it right now to clean up my SSD and offload a bunch of stuff to my bulk storage 8TB HDD

[Allmightyballs]

Just ran it. This is what came back. Honestly Im not real sure how to full read what Im seeing but something still feels odd. I cropped the picture but you should be able to see everything that's ever been put on this PC in the far left side of the picture. Once all of that was downloaded I still had 176g left and as we speak Ive lost almost 2 gigs from the past hour and a half. I had 87 something now have 83.7. At the rate its going Ill be out of space in a day or 2. 

 

Edit - I looked around and it seems that there is a lot of new files from WOW about 500m -1g each. I think it has something to do with the recent launch of classic. Another odd note is right after this test was ran I had a windows update that wouldn't go away. It did something that took me from the 83.7 back up to 93.4. I then did some math and it doesn't make sense. One problem said I should have less space(around 30g total) and the other said I should have around 152. Im baffled completely by all this and not sure exactly where to go from here short of buying a bigger SSD which I hope isn't my only option.

 

Any suggestions?  It doesn't give me the option to clean anything. Also I found an odd file taking up a bit of space highlighted in blue called "panther" is this significant at all? Also after the update I found a 32.8 gig previous windows file that was not there before the update.

[meenmeen1103]

The colored boxes each represent a file, those gray ones are a bunch of 1GB files, clicking on them should bring up the subfolders they are located in. The bottom right red-orange ones are likely system files (the 10gb one likely hibernation file and the 1.7gb one pagefile), not a huge concern. Those gray ones are suspect, so worth checking into if they are needed for a program you use/need.

[TechyBen]

Yep. Almost certainly not the SSD, but software gone wrong. Those grey boxes look to be something eating all your space!

 

Are they crash logs/dump files?

[Allmightyballs]

After checking I found I think 17 1g files. After looking they seem to be labeled as World of Warcraft data but I don't recall having any huge updates to the game recently. 

I had a Microsoft update notice pop up. After I installed it, I got 10+gigs back and found a old windows version files under Disk clean up holding 30g+ which wasn't there upon my first check.

My last post stated the update somehow brought some space back. It was 93.4, haven't touched the PC in a few days because I was out of town, now its showing 97.6. Somethings causing them to flux up and down.

 

Not to sure what to do at this time. Im writing blizzard to see if those files are indeed part of a blizzard update package as most of the used space seems to be taken up from WOW. 

 

Any other advice on how to deal with this issue?? Currently sitting at 97g but I should have 170 at least. Its a brand new PC and only has had a few games put on it and I swear Ive never used the internet on it until posting about this issue and downloading WinDirstat. I use my old Alienware so crap like this is minimalized

[williamcll]

How big is your current WoWs folder size as well as its size listed on programs and features? The game could be as big as GTA5

[Allmightyballs]

After rechecking WOW does seem to be taking up a majority of the space. Whats strange is the space is slowly coming back after each restart & check. When I made my last post I watched it go from 93 to around 98 within 2 hours of having the PC on. I haven't turned it on in a few days until today and out of nowhere its showing around 120g plus an old windows folder that if deleted would give around 30.2gs which brings me only 20g shy of what it should be. Also after looking the missing 20g would most likely be WOW files after the launch of Classic.

 

In summary I'm going to close the case for now since it makes no sense but seems to be coming back. Ill repost if it starts ticking away again.

 

Suggestions & comments are still welcomed to help understand what maybe the issue.