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I can't figure out why my C:\ drive is reporting nearly out of space. I have a 1TB SSD drive, you can see in Disk Management, that I should be getting about 930GB out of it. It reports I'm virtually out of space.

I actually keep nearly everything on my D:\ drive (1 TB SSD), there is no valid reason why C:\ should be out of space. C:\ is virtually nothing more than windows + program installs. All data goes to D:. I also did a folder by folder check in C:\, and none of them report any unusual amount of space used, and the 'folder by folder' check adds up to what File Explorer shows for all folders together.

I do NOT use windows recovery, it is turned off.

I do use hibernation, but it's not unusually large.

I do NOT use Veracrypt or any other such software that might make hidden partitions. I built this O/S myself only a few months ago. I do not download from the internet on this machine, this is a development laptop. I run Avast, SpyBot and MalwareBytes + Windows Defender. The possibility of a virus is near zero.

You can see by my file explorer below, that my clusters size is reasonable, because 'size' and 'size on disk' are nearly identical.

I use R-Wipe & Clean, and I had it delete everything, all browser info, temp files, personal traces, etc.

There is only 1 user on the computer, me.

I ran chkdsk to do a full disk scan and repair, and it reported no errors. I did run it during boot up so that Windows did not interfere.

I did a defrag, and it said there was nothing defrag.

I delete the recycle bin in case there were ghost trash bins out there.

I physically double checked all temp folders that I am aware of.

I did a manual check for any .dmp or .log files that might be hanging out somewhere.

I've gone through 1/2 dozen different posts on similar issues. No matter what I try, I can't figure out where the missing 700GB or so went.

I'm literally out of ideas of where this space (roughly 700GB) has gone.

No unexpected partitions. MMC Allocation

I should be seeing all files.

File Explorer options

I opened C:\, did CTRL-A, and 'properties' to find out what File Explorer calculated. This amount is what I expect.

File Explorer

When opening 'My Computer'

Windows Space Reporting

My hybernation and page files are on C: but are typical sizes.

Hidden files on C:

Volume Shadow Copy output

VSC output

WinDirStat running in admin, shows 50% utilization. Still higher than I expect, but closer.

WinDirStat

WizTree Output

WizTree Output

After looking at results, I followed the 'fat directories' all the way down to Microsoft SQL dump directory. The directory was protected, and file explorer could not access it. That's why File Explorer was returning the wrong results.

Here I deleted the dump files, and now it's what I expected:

After delete dump files

Brian Kitt
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    have you tried [WinDirStat](https://windirstat.net/download.html)? Maybe it'll give you some ideas, though this seems to be a very strange case indeed. – SparedWhisle Mar 01 '20 at 07:54
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    If you do try WinDirStat, run it as an administrator. Many files and folders won't be counted because by default processes are run as a "normal" user and can't look in system folders. Even if your user is an "admin" you need to right click the program and select to run as administrator. – Mokubai Mar 01 '20 at 08:03
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    [WizTree](https://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-finds-the-files-and-folders-using-the-most-disk-space-on-your-hard-drive/) is both faster and likely more reliable, as it reads the MFT directly and won't be masked by Windows APIs. It also must be run as admin. – Bob Mar 01 '20 at 08:07
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    My first guess would be shadow copies. As admin, run `vssadmin list shadowstorage`. – Bob Mar 01 '20 at 08:07
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    Ahh! Thank you so much for your help. With the help of WizTree and WinDirStat, I was easily able to identify the culprit. I have SQL server running on C:\, but all data living on D:\. For some reason, there was about 800GB of dump files in there. But the dump directory was protected, and could not be accessed by my wipe program. It also appears that when I did a File Explorer, that File Explorer could not view that folder either. I deleted all of those dump files, and now I have 800 GB free of 930 GB. WOW. Now, I need to figure out why I have so many SQL dump files. – Brian Kitt Mar 03 '20 at 03:32
  • Thank you very much! I have uninstalled everything even SQL Server and it doesn't delete the files with uninstallation! I was ready to format and then I read your post. I have 800 GB dump files on 4 months old laptop! Now I need to return the server and visual studio and figure how do I prevent this in the future. – Sonja Oct 25 '20 at 18:19

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