Insane Storage Issues on Boot SSD

[MajorChipHazard]

My Samsung 840 Series 120 GB SSD is having some major storage issues.

 

When I first built my PC I installed 1 or two games on it as well as my OS. (8.1) and still had about 30 gigs to spare

I have since uninstalled all games from the drive.  I have no movies, or big software installed on it.

For the past few months I've gone into my file explorer and seen that the drive space is in the "red" state and 

is displaying a very low disk space left (somewhere in the 5 GB Range)

 

I used to fix this by going through and cleaning up things like my downloads folder, disk cleanup, etc. 

However the drive is now almost constantly in the red state despite having little to nothing installed on it but my OS.

If I first turn on my PC the free space on the drive is enough to keep it out of the red state, but after a half hour or so of just browsing

around the internet the disk goes back into the red state and somehow suddenly eats more space!

 

So how can I fix this? I've noticed that my TEMP folder is excessively large.  I've screen capped examples:

 

Drive Setup : http://i.imgur.com/h7SD5yF.png

Users File Size: http://i.imgur.com/EJJ2T09.png

Local, LocalLow, Roaming: http://i.imgur.com/ACO5OCh.png

Temp File: http://i.imgur.com/hPKVhG6.png

Temp File(s): http://i.imgur.com/lEiajsz.png

 

I would greatly appreciate any help or ideas you have on how to clear up this phantom space

[Enderman]

use windirstat to look at whats taking up all the space

[Hspasta]

Feel free to delete them. Programs use those temp folders for temporary storage for whatever they need to do.

 

What you should do is figure out what program is generating all that garbage in your temp folders.

[chpoit]

I remember there was a tool that mapped your hardrive that linus showed off at some point, let me try to find it. I will edit my post once I do.

[chpoit]

Sorry for double post. Page did not load

 

Might as well use this post, the software was called Spacesniffer. 

 

I use it to check what files are big and what takes a lot of room and decides whatever needs to be cleaned up.

[MajorChipHazard]

Feel free to delete them. Programs use those temp folders for temporary storage for whatever they need to do.

 

What you should do is figure out what program is generating all that garbage in your temp folders.

 

I was extremely hesitant to delete them, because I was told that one of the fastest ways to screw up your installation of windows is to start messing around in the temp folders.

Especially with the files that are modified daily...

[MrBucket101]

I use spacemonger, but I bought a license, I like that it visually displays larger files and folders as bigger in the hard drive map.

 

Makes finding where most of my space has gone a breeze

 

WinDirStat is probably the best free alternative though
 

 

I was extremely hesitant to delete them, because I was told that one of the fastest ways to screw up your installation of windows is to start messing around in the temp folders.

Especially with the files that are modified daily...

 

Nah you should be fine, your temp folder doesn't persist after reboot anyways (or if it does it will be overwritten). It's called a Temporary Folder for a reason

[Schlager]

i use Ccleaner to maintain my temp data.

 

Here's the link https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner choose the free version to download from filehippo.

[MajorChipHazard]

Thanks guys!  I deleted the temp files that were taking up so much space and got rid of some other things that I didn't see before that WinDirStat showed me.

 

I now have over 35 gigs of free space on my SSD! Thanks again