C drive full...but how?

[kwazuki]

Hello, it's my first time posting here.

 

I've recently built my first desktop PC, and I'm having a little trouble.

My system has 3 drives; a 250GB m.2 SSD, a 1TB HDD, and a 3TB HDD.

I planned on using my SSD as my boot drive, and the 3TB HDD as my data drive.

I've configured all of my "My Documents"-ish folders to be on my 3TB HDD, and have been installing all my non-essential programs to the same drive.

 

For the past few days, I've been getting notifications saying that my boot drive is full, so I went to check my boot drive.

It says my boot drive is 232GB / 232GB used, and there are 191GB worth of applications on this drive.

But from what I can see, there are only 5GB worth of programs installed on this SSD...

 

Even if I uninstall a program (like photoshop), and re-install it to my HDD, the unused space refills as I re-install the program on a different drive.

 

Have I configured my storage incorrectly, or is there some other kind of problem?

I haven't been able to find a post where there seems to be a similar problem.

If someone could help me fix this issue, or point me to a post, it would be great.

 

thanks for your help in advance.

 

kwazuki

[kwazuki]

Just a follow-up.

 

I've tried running WinDirStat which I've seen on multiple other threads, and my C drive usage says it's only 10.7% used.

[OrionFOTL]

Post a screenshot of what WinDirStat says.

[Mojo-Jojo]

Protip: Use WizTree. It's WinDirStat but it's pretty much instant.

I caught someone mention it in the latest live-stream. Tried it out. Works great.

[kwazuki]

thanks for the quick reply.

 

here's a screenshot of WinDirStat.

the C and E drives are the ones I'm trying to use.

[OrionFOTL]

When you said "It says my boot drive is 232GB / 232GB used, and there are 191GB worth of applications on this drive.", where does it say that? Can you make a screenshot of that too?

[kwazuki]

It's in the windows settings (sorry it's in Japanese...)

 

the first category translates to "Applications and functions" I think.

If I click on the "Applications and functions" it looks like this

 

 

It's sorted by size, and all the rest are microsoft things.

[Giganthrax]

There's a free program called TreeSize. It can show you exactly how big each folder on your drive is, which will hopefully enable you to identify the problematic program. 

[kwazuki]

Mojo-Jojo, thanks for the pro-tip!

 

I might install WizzTree, but I hope I won't have to use it in the future...

Thank you for the suggestion either way!

[RAS_3885]

@kwazuki

 

Just a thought, do you by chance have Windows backup enabled? At one point I had Windows set to backup one of my drives, but had the drive that contained the backup included in the list of drives to backup. Might be a bug that's since been fixed, but it didn't take long for my 1 TB drive to fill up since it essentially became exponential file size growth. Oops.

[WkdPaul]

* your thread was moved to the Troubleshooting section *

[kwazuki]

@RAS_3885 Thanks for the reply! I have windows backup enabled! I don't think I'm backing up the backup file, but thanks for the head's up!

[Alan G]

WizTree is a really nice utility to keep on hand.  You can set it so it runs from a USB thumb drive which is nice if you have multiple PCs. Some times Windows apps save stuff to the C; drive if they have not been configured.  I had this issue several years ago with a common streaming app whose default cache location was on the C drive and it filled things up pretty fast. 

[Nixxie_Spark]

I'd recommend giving your C:\ drive a scan with agent ransack or treesize, might be able to view big files more clearly and remove anything taking up big space.

[kwazuki]

thanks everybody!
I've identified the problem using WizTree! (It would've been possible with WinDirStat as well though)

there were gigantic log files (like a 85GB txt file...) in some of the programs I've been using.

I've moved the log files to the HDD, and my SSD has free space now!

 

thanks again for everyone who helped!

 

kwazuki