C: drive has slowly been losing disk space without any indication what's eating memory.

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C: drive has slowly been losing disk space without any indication what's eating memory.

Anonymous

For the past few days leading up to two weeks, I've slowly been losing disk space on my C: drive. This usually isn't a problem since Windows will create log files, dumps, etc. on its own, but lately, the size of files being written to my disk exceeds more than a few gigabytes. Moreover, I'm not sure what's causing this. I haven't installed any applications in C: drive for the past month (in fact, I've done nothing but uninstall apps on it) yet my available disk space continues to dwindle.

I have a 256GB SSD installed on my laptop running Windows 10. I have 115 apps in total in my C: drive, with only 2 apps exceeding 1GB (these are AutoCAD and Ubuntu on Windows). The rest of the applications have sizes ranging from 10MB to 800MB, with the majority under 100MB. Even with a gracious estimate of 100GB memory on all my installed applications in C: (a gross overestimate, the actual is more around 70GB), and 100GB Windows system files, I should have 56 GB available at minimum. This is not the case as I have only 25GB available. Things aren't adding up.

I have my suspicions that maybe some application in my C: drive is causing a memory leak. My disk defrag returns optimized and I've done disk cleanup twice, which only returns a measly 10 to 15GB memory back to C:. Any suggestions on what I can do?

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Answer 1

Hi Carmelo. I'm Greg, 10 years awarded Windows MVP and Volunteer Moderator, here to help you.

Could be a log file growing out of control, there are several such bugs that still pop up in Windows.

To trace what is eating the space, use Treesize which is explained here: https://www.groovypost.com/howto/map-hardrive-u...

Feel free to ask back any questions. Based on detailed results you post back I will have other suggestions if necessary.

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Answer 2

Hello Greg,

Thank you for the link. I've downloaded TreeSize and was able to discern the cause of my disk space issue. TreeSize is very useful in this regard since it provides a visual representation of what's been eating up my memory.

The cause of my memory issue was caused by my Steam installation folder. I have Steam installed on my laptop, and I download games frequently. Although I've configured the Steam application to save games on drive D: (its a secondary drive on my laptop, 1TB HDD), system files, configs and metadata for this application are saved to C:, which is eating 80GB alone. I'm just really relieved that its not a memory leak or a Windows bug, but rather just a directory misconfiguration in this one specific app. I can easily fix this by modifying my Steam installation folder. Or I can uninstall it completely, and have the application reinstalled in drive D:.

Cheers!

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C: drive has slowly been losing disk space without any indication what's eating memory.

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