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I've recently set up a new W11 machine with a clean install and a couple of games, and the system had a random BSOD. The strange part though was that after recovering the system did a disk scan and repair, and on boot up afterwards most of the games plus Steam itself had disappeared from the system.

After reinstalling the games the system is now consuming nearly twice as much space on the SSD as it was before. Windows Explorer reports that 474GB of space is being used, but there's only 243GB of data in the drive if I select every folder inside it and check properties (including hidden files). There's only 2 newish AAA games each with somewhere between 50 and 100GB each, and some smaller/older titles; notably the amount of data that went missing after the crash is probably close to 200GB, so I suspect that the missing data is still floating around, but because it's not visible anywhere it's just taking up space.

Is there any way to delete this orphaned data? I've tried Disk Clean-up but it could only find less than 100Mb of temp files and what have you.

Rohit Gupta
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Positron
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    Probably should probably provide a [WizTree](https://superuser.com/questions/8248/how-can-i-visualize-the-file-system-usage-on-windows/407971#407971) screenshot if you want an explanation of what’s actually happening on your system – Ramhound Aug 06 '23 at 13:27
  • I didn't want to install a third party tool just for a once off troubleshooting step, but for what it's worth the built in Windows tool for characterising disk usage reports 216GB used by "other" even though the breakdown it lasts only shows about 400MB of files with the largest folder being 364MB. Whatever is taking up space isn't visible to the system. – Positron Aug 21 '23 at 09:15
  • Your question cannot be answered without more information and File Explorer simply cannot provide it – Ramhound Aug 21 '23 at 10:29
  • Can you suggest any open source tools or first party options? – Positron Aug 23 '23 at 16:31
  • I actually already did – Ramhound Aug 23 '23 at 21:19
  • No, you recommended a closed source third party tool and linked to a StackExchange post so old that it's literally discussing Windows XP era software – Positron Aug 26 '23 at 21:36
  • The age of the question does not diminish the fact the suggestions outlined in numerous answers to an existing question still apply today. You asked for a software recommendation despite knowing, questions seeking software recommendations, are out of scope. The existing questions exists, to solve numerous problems, not because they recommend software but are methods to solve a gaping functional hole that doesn’t exist in File Explorer. You wanted a recommendation, I actually gave one, in my asking for you to provide more information so your question could be answered . – Ramhound Aug 26 '23 at 22:38
  • This question should include more details and clarify the problem. I waited nearly a month before I issue this close vote. The necessary information can easily be provided by author. – Ramhound Aug 26 '23 at 22:39
  • The question I linked to is considered the Canonical question on how to visualize the complete and detailed state of disk usage on Windows. This type of question could easily be closed as a duplicate of that Canonical question. Since seeing a visualization of your disk usage provides the exact level of detail necessary to determine what is taking up your storage space. – Ramhound Aug 26 '23 at 22:42
  • Wiztree is a good and reputable and free disk mapper tool that does not need to be installed as it offers a portable version as well. If you want to find an open source alternative, go ahead. We need data to better understand your issue and we've told you what data we need. – music2myear Sep 01 '23 at 03:49
  • I did not in fact ask for a software recommendation. I asked a question about how to troubleshoot disk usage. You provided a software recommendation that was unsolicited, and when I asked for a way of getting the data you requested without a closed source third party tool you told me to go find it myself. – Positron Sep 02 '23 at 15:27
  • The age of the question you linked to is relevant because despite the rules you yourself quoted and despite the stated intent it appears to largely be a list of software recommendations, and recommendations for third party software from the Windows Vista era are not relevant on Windows 11. If the answer to this question is to run some random third party software on my machine then I'd rather just leave it - 150GB of idle SSD storage is cheaper than risking a ransomware attack from random software, and I have no way of knowing if the developers are as reliable today as they were 10 years ago. – Positron Sep 02 '23 at 15:30

1 Answers1

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You may have a corrupted filesystem, since it died in the middle of writing. Run chkdsk

chkdsk c: /F /X

This fixes errors on disk (F) and forces volume to dismount first if necessary (X). or

chkdsk c: /scan /forceofflinefix

If it finds any errors they are fixed at next reboot.

Rohit Gupta
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  • Coming back to this a bit late, but chkdsk reports no errors and a clean filesystem, it seems to think the extra 200 odd GB of data is supposed to be there. That includes running an offline scan and repair. – Positron Aug 21 '23 at 09:17