I seem to have just made a ton of space on my hard drive & not sure how?

B0bbyEwing

Windows 10
1TB Samsung SSD
Had about 80GB remaining on it. I emptied the recycle bin & it went up minimal. Say 82GB after the empty. This was yesterday.
Today I'm at 183GB free space, yet I've deleted nothing further.

I've had a gander around & can't see anything obviously missing.

How does that work then? I'm not complaining ... yet (unless there is something important that's somehow missing), but just baffled.

debitcardmayhem

Files that were deleted, but still “ln use”, rebooting and they go?

Frozen_up_north

I think Windows keeps a few “updates”, so you can roll back in case of problems. Every now and again it will delete them.

Just as well you have an over size SSD 😎. I manage with a standard office PC that only has 250 GB. Large amounts of local storage means more time needed to backup.

grumpycrab

B0bbyEwing said:

... I'm not complaining ... yet (unless there is something important that's somehow missing), but just baffled.

How do you back up your data files?

B0bbyEwing

grumpycrab said:

B0bbyEwing said:

... I'm not complaining ... yet (unless there is something important that's somehow missing), but just baffled.

How do you back up your data files?

Drag & drop on to external HDD.

I know, it should be automated, I should have cloud storage & I should have other backups dotted around the world too.
But that's what I currently do anyway.

Frozen_up_north

B0bbyEwing 

How do you back up your data files?

Drag & drop on to external HDD.

I use Acronis to backup the entire drive, which I do once per week. One particular program is configured to auto save work to my MS One Drive (cloud) and I drag/drop any files that I need access to when away from home to my Proton Drive (cloud).

Recently I did an upgrade on my laptop Win 11 Pro, which fouled up… Acronis saved me having to re-install from scratch, it took about 15 mins to be up and running again.

grumpycrab

B0bbyEwing said:

grumpycrab said:

B0bbyEwing said:

... I'm not complaining ... yet (unless there is something important that's somehow missing), but just baffled.

How do you back up your data files?

Drag & drop on to external HDD.
 .

Better than doing nothing. Windows file history will do that for you with minimal effort 

Vitor

Probably Windows Storage Sense running as the disk capacity is tight. 

Newcad

^+1 most likely Storage Sense clearing "Windows Update Cleanup" the same as Disk Cleanup does.

However. as I'm sure you know you are pushing things on recommended free space; so whatever you are storing on that drive (movies?) should probably be moved off to another (external?) Drive.

B0bbyEwing

Newcad said:

^+1 most likely Storage Sense clearing "Windows Update Cleanup" the same as Disk Cleanup does.

However. as I'm sure you know you are pushing things on recommended free space; so whatever you are storing on that drive (movies?) should probably be moved off to another (external?) Drive.

Pushing things as in I'm running out of space (obvious)
Or pushing things as in running so low can then cause some kind of running issue/fault (not obvious - at least not to the average Joe).

Newcad

The Operating System needs a certain amount of disk space free to work at it's best.

The general rules of thumb are between 15%-20% free on a HDD and 10%-15% on SSD.

You will find some that say you should leave more free space on a SSD, but that is generally for older models. Most manufacturers now include some 'overprovisioning' (ie. Some 'hidden' extra free space that you can't see, can't access yourself, and is only used when the drive itself needs it).

More info: https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmanager/how-much-free-space-should-you-leave-on-a-pc.html