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Disk Space Used/Free Amounts are Wrong

Anonymous
2021-12-28T15:49:21+00:00

I have a year-old laptop with a 256 GB SSD hard drive. I added about 4 GB of files. Nothing else. Windows 10 is about 20 GB. But when I checked my disk space - right-clicking on the C: drive - Properties - it says 212 GB used and 9 GB free, for a total of 221 GB. How can that be? How can I only have 9 GB left when I barely have any files on it? It should be about 24 GB used and about 232 GB free. Even if I was using 212 GB, I still should have 42 GB left.

When I go into the Settings - System - Storage, that says 221 GB used and 10.5 GB free. But when I add up the top four listed - Apps & Storage, Desktop and Other - it totals less then 40 GB (still much higher then it should be).

But when I click, "Show more categories," "System & reserved" suddenly appears on the top and that one is using 172 GB!

I don't understand how I can be running out of storage. Even with this "Reserved Storage," I still should have about 220 GB of disk space left. So something is obviously wrong.

Don't bother telling me to delete temp files, cookies, Recycle bin, etc. I do it all the time.

I did some checking and there's this "Reserved Storage," something about future updates Windows has. It uses about 7 GB, maybe up to 20 GB. Shouldn't be 172 GB. But don't bother telling me to disable it or do something else because I wouldn't understand your complicated list of instructions and don't want to mess up my computer.

So is there a simple solution to this? There should be. But I shouldn't have to deal with this because it shouldn't be a problem. Why can't Windows do simple arithmetic and add up file sizes correctly?

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. DaveM121 884.5K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2021-12-28T19:32:39+00:00

    Hi Steven

    The actual size of a 256GB drive is approx. 234GB that is caused by the difference in the way hard drive manufacturers calculate drive space and the way Windows calculates drive space.

    1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes

    1 GiB = 1,073,741,824 bytes

    Your Windows folder itself is 22.2GB and that is the normal size

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-12-28T19:13:40+00:00

    Forgot the Run as Administrator. Here it is:

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  3. DaveM121 884.5K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2021-12-28T18:55:12+00:00

    Hi Steven

    TreeSize was not run in Administrator Mode (see errors at the bottom), right click the TreeSize icon and choose 'Run as Administrator', then please provide another screenshot.

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-12-28T17:28:20+00:00

    Here they are, hope I did it correctly.

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  5. DaveM121 884.5K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2021-12-28T16:23:00+00:00

    Hi Steven,

    I am Dave, I will help you with this.

    1

    Click the link below to download a small free utility called Treesize.

    https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/treesize-free...

    To run TreeSize, right click its icon and choose Run as Administrator.

    Please provide a screenshot of your C drive in that TreeSize utility, so I can see your hard drive and work out where that space is being used and if there is an underlying problem.

    2

    Open Disk Management (accessible by right clicking your Start Button)

    Make sure the drive is visible in the bottom pane, then, please provide a screenshot of that Disk Management window.

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