My C Drive seems to always fill up and I am not sure what to do next.

[GhostieBoy]

I booted up my PC today to be met with a notification saying Opera could not be updated as I ran out of space on my C drive. I have a 250GB Samsung 870 (i believe its an 870, that's the SATA m.2 series, right?)

 

I've scrolled through my C drive and removed like 2 or 3 minecraft modpacks from the drive totaling like 25GB total. Deleted them, emptied the recycle bin, still showing full. 

 

I found a folder deep within the local app data in packages called Clipchamp.Clipchamp_yxz26nhyzhsrt, which contains 15GB of stuff. but idk what it is or what its used for as I don't recall ever using it

 

There is another folder called SpotifyAB.SpotifyMusic_zpdnekdrzrea0. which is 8GB, but that makes some sense cause I use spotify, I just don't know what it needs 8GB of storage for. I don't think I have any songs downloaded from spotify. and even if I did, would they be saved there? or somewhere less... buried?

 

It just seems like my C Drive is ALWAYS full or close to full. I have a new hard drive that I would like to put there that is 1TB, but I feel like doing that is just excessive and unnecessary in a way. 

 

Any advice on the best way to scrub my C Drive? Or even why deleting those modpacks did nothing (although I havent restarted my PC, so that might help).

 

Any help is greatly appreciated

[PcBeExpensive]

6 minutes ago, GhostieBoy said:

I booted up my PC today to be met with a notification saying Opera could not be updated as I ran out of space on my C drive. I have a 250GB Samsung 870 (i believe its an 870, that's the SATA m.2 series, right?)

 

I've scrolled through my C drive and removed like 2 or 3 minecraft modpacks from the drive totaling like 25GB total. Deleted them, emptied the recycle bin, still showing full. 

 

I found a folder deep within the local app data in packages called Clipchamp.Clipchamp_yxz26nhyzhsrt, which contains 15GB of stuff. but idk what it is or what its used for as I don't recall ever using it

 

There is another folder called SpotifyAB.SpotifyMusic_zpdnekdrzrea0. which is 8GB, but that makes some sense cause I use spotify, I just don't know what it needs 8GB of storage for. I don't think I have any songs downloaded from spotify. and even if I did, would they be saved there? or somewhere less... buried?

 

It just seems like my C Drive is ALWAYS full or close to full. I have a new hard drive that I would like to put there that is 1TB, but I feel like doing that is just excessive and unnecessary in a way. 

 

Any advice on the best way to scrub my C Drive? Or even why deleting those modpacks did nothing (although I havent restarted my PC, so that might help).

 

Any help is greatly appreciated

Do restart your PC. Clipchamp is a video editing software so maybe that folder is some videos or maybe something to do with the app. Search up storage on your window search thingy and you will find a panel called storage settings and use that, it shows you what is using your data and its easier to delete apps and windows like that + it gives recommendations on what to delete.

[GhostieBoy]

2 minutes ago, PcBeExpensive said:

Do restart your PC. Clipchamp is a video editing software so maybe that folder is some videos or maybe something to do with the app. Search up storage on your window search thingy and you will find a panel called storage settings and use that, it shows you what is using your data and its easier to delete apps and windows like that + it gives recommendations on what to delete.

I figured a restart was necessary. It just seems like sometimes it refreshes immediately, and other times it doesn't. I guess I should have done that prior to making this post haha.

 

I actually realized what ClipChamp was shortly after this post, but I just don't know why it would take up 15GB unless some video clips are stored there for some reason. idk. might try uninstalling it and seeing what happens.

 

I had no idea about the storage settings thingy, so that's good info. I will investigate that next.

 

Thank you very much!

[OddOod]

I'd use WizTree to see all the files on the drive. Also probably just get a new drive and do a clean install of windows, though I understand if that's not in your budget

[Alan G]

Get a program that does disk analysis.  I use WizTree for this and it's very fast.  You can also install it on a USB thumb drive and run it from there.  You can then wee what is taking up space on your C drive with ease.  Also, how much RAM do you have?  Windows by default will allocate 3x the amount of RAM to your pagefile.sys folder.  You can shrink this down if it's taking up too much space.

[PDifolco]

49 minutes ago, GhostieBoy said:

I booted up my PC today to be met with a notification saying Opera could not be updated as I ran out of space on my C drive. I have a 250GB Samsung 870 (i believe its an 870, that's the SATA m.2 series, right?)

 

I've scrolled through my C drive and removed like 2 or 3 minecraft modpacks from the drive totaling like 25GB total. Deleted them, emptied the recycle bin, still showing full. 

 

I found a folder deep within the local app data in packages called Clipchamp.Clipchamp_yxz26nhyzhsrt, which contains 15GB of stuff. but idk what it is or what its used for as I don't recall ever using it

 

There is another folder called SpotifyAB.SpotifyMusic_zpdnekdrzrea0. which is 8GB, but that makes some sense cause I use spotify, I just don't know what it needs 8GB of storage for. I don't think I have any songs downloaded from spotify. and even if I did, would they be saved there? or somewhere less... buried?

 

It just seems like my C Drive is ALWAYS full or close to full. I have a new hard drive that I would like to put there that is 1TB, but I feel like doing that is just excessive and unnecessary in a way. 

 

Any advice on the best way to scrub my C Drive? Or even why deleting those modpacks did nothing (although I havent restarted my PC, so that might help).

 

Any help is greatly appreciated

Get a bigger drive anyway, you will waste your life trying to clean a 250GB drive ...

 

A Gen3 1TB NVMe is $60, less than a console game

[SpookyCitrus]

Use WizTree or Windirstat to view all files, remove temporary or unnecessary files it finds that take up a decent amount of space. 

 

If it were my computer I'd just buy a new drive, 1TB sata SSDs, and Gen 3 Nvmes are pretty inexpensive these days. Like @PDifolco said, it's pretty pointless to keep constantly cleaning a 250GB.

[GhostieBoy]

3 hours ago, Alan G said:

Get a program that does disk analysis.  I use WizTree for this and it's very fast.  You can also install it on a USB thumb drive and run it from there.  You can then wee what is taking up space on your C drive with ease.  Also, how much RAM do you have?  Windows by default will allocate 3x the amount of RAM to your pagefile.sys folder.  You can shrink this down if it's taking up too much space.

I have 64GB of RAM, so would that mean it is allocating 192GB of RAM to the pagefile.sys folder? cause if so, thats kinda fucked lmaooo

 

I'll give wiztree a shot and see if that works as well

[GhostieBoy]

3 hours ago, PDifolco said:

Get a bigger drive anyway, you will waste your life trying to clean a 250GB drive ...

 

A Gen3 1TB NVMe is $60, less than a console game

Must have missed the part in my post where I said I have a 980 pro 1TB, but I didnt want to jump straight into a boot drive replacement

 

[GhostieBoy]

3 minutes ago, SpookyCitrus said:

Use WizTree or Windirstat to view all files, remove temporary or unnecessary files it finds that take up a decent amount of space. 

 

If it were my computer I'd just buy a new drive, 1TB sata SSDs, and Gen 3 Nvmes are pretty inexpensive these days. Like @PDifolco said, it's pretty pointless to keep constantly cleaning a 250GB.

I'll prolly do a combo of both. I wanna know why it keeps filling up. it seems crazy that I keep having this problem. because if its happening on a 250, it will happen on a 1TB further down the line if its something specific, atleast imo. I know that seems silly cause it would be much further down the line, but I'd rather try and diagnose it a bit before jumping to a drive replacement.

 

I have 2 980 pro 1TB's that I can use (I just havent cause ngl the process of swapping out my boot drive has been a little terrifying for various reasons). I also was finishing school and I used my desktop for school, so I didnt want to break something and render my PC unusable cause of a corrupted windows or something. But now that I am graduated and work gives me a laptop, I should be fine to do it soon.

[SpookyCitrus]

9 minutes ago, GhostieBoy said:

I have 64GB of RAM, so would that mean it is allocating 192GB of RAM to the pagefile.sys folder? cause if so, thats kinda fucked lmaooo

 

I'll give wiztree a shot and see if that works as well

If your Pagefile.sys file is 192GB that's not using RAM it's using system storage. If you delete it and make a new one it should clear up at least that much on your drive. The pagefile.sys shouldn't be that large. That would be why it keeps filling up. If your pagefile is bugged anytime you clear off space and restart the computer it's just going to make that file larger. I've seen it happen several times before.

[Allan B]

In Windows you can run "Disk Cleanup", once it opens click "clean up system files", this will let you select and reclaim all the extra space used by windows updates.  If the system has been patching for years you can recover a fair amount.

[PDifolco]

34 minutes ago, GhostieBoy said:

Must have missed the part in my post where I said I have a 980 pro 1TB, but I didnt want to jump straight into a boot drive replacement

 

You should, Win10/11 can't be held on a 250GB drive after some time

[PcBeExpensive]

5 hours ago, GhostieBoy said:

I figured a restart was necessary. It just seems like sometimes it refreshes immediately, and other times it doesn't. I guess I should have done that prior to making this post haha.

 

I actually realized what ClipChamp was shortly after this post, but I just don't know why it would take up 15GB unless some video clips are stored there for some reason. idk. might try uninstalling it and seeing what happens.

 

I had no idea about the storage settings thingy, so that's good info. I will investigate that next.

 

Thank you very much!

no worries, great that you managed to get to the bottom of it!

[Alan G]

14 hours ago, GhostieBoy said:

Must have missed the part in my post where I said I have a 980 pro 1TB, but I didnt want to jump straight into a boot drive replacement

 

Samsung have a free data transfer utility that you can use to clone your old OS drive over.  It's super easy to use and does not destroy what is on the old drive.  When I updated my workstation to a 1 TB NVME drive, that's what I did.  I use the old 500 GB SSD as an OS back up in case anything ever goes wrong with Windows updates.

[Blue4130]

On 4/4/2024 at 6:51 AM, PDifolco said:

You should, Win10/11 can't be held on a 250GB drive after some time

Define "after some time" because windows 10 is perfectly fine on 250gb. I've had my current install for 4 years and am only using 150gb, my wife is at 7 years and using even less.

[PDifolco]

8 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

Define "after some time" because windows 10 is perfectly fine on 250gb. I've had my current install for 4 years and am only using 150gb, my wife is at 7 years and using even less.

For me it was around 3 years, my boot drive is only Windows and software (and not that much of them) and is around 270GB (on a 400GB partition)

Sure a ton of it is all the crap Windows sends in the Users folder, but even if I do manage them it keeps growing...