windows 10 loosing disk space

Question

I have a terabyte HD and it was running out of space, so I got a 1 TB portable SSD drive. I was able to free up 450gb of space, since then, my hard drive is losing space again. I removed all programs no longer used, cleared cache, temp files, etc. and this morning I was able to free up 10 gb (still running out) and now, I have less then 2 gb free.

What could be eating up disk space and in such a rapid pace? What can I check, disable, remove, etc. to get more space freed up?

Answer 1

Sounds like something is writing lots of files to your disk. Unfortunately we have no way of knowing what that process(es) is/are. To help you figure this out, if simply scanning the drive doesn't help, you'll need to use a disk space analyzer. It'll show you where all the files are coming from and from that you can look at the files to see who might be creating them. I don't use a DSA myself so here's a link to a third party site that has some recommendations. Bear in mind that some of its recommendations are probably paid ads.

If you cannot figure out, from the DSA results, which process is creating the files (looking at the create user is often helpful) then use a tool like Process Monitor to monitor calls to the file system to the directory(ies) that are filling up. It should tell you who is creating the files but it can easily generate overwhelming logs because of all the IO calls so you'll likely need to filter out "safe" apps like services.

Answer 2

Update: I closed every app and I watched the space on the drive go from 20 GB of free space to 10 mb in 90 minutes. I looked in task manager and stopped every service, app, etc. I could without shutting windows down in general and as able to stop. I ran anti virus (with malware) a few times and nothing. I'm at a loss at this point

Answer 3

1) Please run through the steps in these links as needed to free up drive space:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/83441-free-up-drive-space-windows-10-a.html
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/free-up-drive-space-in-windows-a18fae02-a0fa-8df9-9838-8970f9939de4

2) Launch Treesize > expand rows as needed > this should allow the size of files to be recorded by creating images
https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free

3) After drive space has been spontaneously reduced > relaunch Treesize > expand rows as needed > record another image

4) Compare each file (before and after) > this should identify the file(s) that have significantly increased in size

Another step that can be made is to make free backup images and save the images to another disk drive or the cloud.

Images can be restored in less than one hour and often in much less time.

(Acronis, Aoemi, EaseUS, Macrium, Paragon, etc.)

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Answer 4

Update: Did those steps, freed up over 20 gig, and then in a little over 2 hours, it was down to 1 gb of free space and nothing was running.