Where did Windows get the Space from?

[Blizzforte]

So my Windows 10 laptop only had like 100MB space left. What happened was that all files and folders lost their thumbnails. Is this normal? And then when I checked back a day later, there were suddenly 700MB space left! What just happened there? Did Windows 10 delete files on its own? Where did the extra space come from?

[GuiltySpark_]

Disk Cleanup might have run, who knows. What's more important is you get a handle on why you have such little space on your disk. Have you manually run disk cleanup? I would also suggest something like WizTree to get a visual on what files are taking up space.

[Needfuldoer]

Sounds like Disk Cleanup ran, and deleted about 600 megs of temp files.

 

Run it again manually, see if it gives you the option to purge anything it hasn't already.

 

System hibernation creates an invisible system file on the C drive called hiberfil.sys. This is where Windows dumps all the contents of RAM before the system shuts off when you hibernate. If you never hibernate your PC (especially if it's a desktop) and you're really tight on space, you can buy a little time by disabling hibernation from a command prompt running as admin:

 

powercfg /hibernate off

This should free up an amount of drive space equal to your system memory. Once you've cleaned the drive up and you don't need that space anymore, and you decide you do want to hibernate your machine again, you can turn it back on:

 

powercfg /hibernate on

 

A tool like WinDirStat can show you a visualization of all the folders on your PC, so you can figure out what's eating up all your space. (Update rollback cache files tend to eat a lot of it up.)

 

https://windirstat.net/

 

If just cleaning up system clutter isn't enough to get you workable space, you'll have to buy another drive or delete some stuff. Steam games you haven't run in a long time, "Linux ISOs", etc.

[LionSpeck]

5 minutes ago, Blizzforte said:

So my Windows 10 laptop only had like 100MB space left. What happened was that all files and folders lost their thumbnails. Is this normal? And then when I checked back a day later, there were suddenly 700MB space left! What just happened there? Did Windows 10 delete files on its own? Where did the extra space come from?

As you said in your own words: you lost the thumbnails. They are stored, for all files, in databases that windows got rid of to save space. The files are still there, intact.

I'd suggest you to free up some space deleting old stuff, uninstalling programs or upgrading your hard drive; running so low on storage can be problematic.

[da na]

Disk Cleanup deleted your thumbnails - it does this when you're low on space.

It probably also deleted old Windows updates and temporary files. 

I'd recommend deleting any files you don't need and giving the OS a little room to breathe. 

[GoodBytes]

Windows 10 has Storage Sense. When you are low in space, it automatically turns on.

It periodically does cleans up, such as the Temp folder. It will even cleanup the Downloads folder (so don't put important files in there).

It will also uninstall/archive unused Store acquired apps automatically.

 

You can find its options under Settings panel.

 

 

[Blizzforte]

So I checked back two days later and now there are 17GB of free space? I didn't delete anything yet! I hope these are not important files! It can't be that would just happen automatically?

[AllanIsKing]

Run Directory Report (DR) as an administrator.  This will allow you to scan hidden files.  DR will show you where your disk space went