Free space on SSD quickly dsisappearing.

B0bbyEwing

I've a 1TB SSD which Win10 is installed on.

I had 250GB free.

I downloaded a number of files which took me under 100GB, transferred these to another drive & deleted from the SSD.

Rinse & repeat.

On top of this, I've also been working to delete & also compress a ton of video files, point being space being taken up should be reducing & space available should be increasing.

I'm now looking at 102GB free and don't understand why. I should be at least 200GB, up to 250GB+.

I remember I had something similar years ago with a different SSD where I wasn't even downloading anything but space was disappearing. That's part reason why I switched that SSD out for a 1TB one.

Any idea?

vacheron

Get a copy of Wiztree. I've used lots similar and this is by far the best, free, and fastest.

It will show you graphically where all your space is being used.

https://diskanalyzer.com/download

B0bbyEwing

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81970919#Comment_81970919

I have that & looked. I know where the bulk of my stuff is & it confirms it.

I was wondering more if it's likely to be temporary files or just some system kind of junk or whatever that's accumulated. Little bits here & there that individually look like nothing but compiled they make a difference. And then perhaps it needing a clean out of these files.

I'm just purely guessing here because I've not actually been adding any bulky files to the drive. I've been taking them out.

vacheron

Windows keeps a lot of update files in case you need them in the future.

Also, it can keep a lot of system restore points which can take up a lot of space.

Have you tried running the windows "Disk Clean-up" feature and see what that finds (also tick the "Clean up system files" option).

kaMelo

You're unlikely to compress video files to generate space as they're usually highly compressed already. I agree with @vacheron, the Windows Clean Up is pretty good at removing old updates and temporary files so worth giving it a go.

Other than that, hard drives are cheap and ideally suited for cold storage of video files.

Vitor

Could be a dodgy USB which fakes the reported capacity

bob2302

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81970957#Comment_81970957

I suspect the OP meant recompress them, which can save a lot of space.

Neil_Jones

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81974809#Comment_81974809

Only to a point.
In theory compressing video to h.265 can theoretically shave anywhere up to half the file size over the same file compressed to h.264, assuming everything else is the same. The reality may be different.

Whether it saves "a lot of space" is up for debate, as is the time required to re-encode everything just to save what may be a net few Gigabytes of space.

For OP, the Recycle bin counts towards the space "used" on a drive, so if you've deleted your video files in there (assuming you didn't get a "this file is too big do you permanently want to delete it?" message) you can probably get a chunk of space back by emptying the bin, though Disk Cleanup will do this for you if you select the appropriate option.

B0bbyEwing

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81974969#Comment_81974969

Yeah I found out about the Recycle Bin situation a few months ago but thanks for pointing it out anyway. It's not that.

Disk Cleanup also apparently wont save much, just a few GB.

Weird. I've no idea what it is that's going on.

Anyway, I'm going the process of running through all files on the PC & having a major sort & cull. The whole process will take over 12 months, maybe a few years of just chipping away as there's that much.

bob2302

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81974969#Comment_81974969

If someone says that they are compressing a ton of video files, then this is what they are doing. The only alterative is that they got through that ton without noticing that there was no benefit

I've saved TBs not GB.

B0bbyEwing

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81979161#Comment_81979161

Well I do know that using MakeMKV you could end up with a (let's pick a figure here although it can vary…) 30GB file. Get that tweaked & you can run down to a file that's only a couple GB, on just 1 file, so yeah I'm with you that massive space savings can be made.

Anyway I'm just coming back to this thread because drive C has been getting progressively less & less for free space. 100GB to 80GB, 70GB, 60GB. Last night as I went to bed it was 55GB.

Just fired up the PC this morning, bearing in mind I've deleted absolutely nothing since last night ……. 211GB free space.

Weird.