I have tried using Windirstat and space sniffer, both of them show that 18 gb is occupied
Elfarma
Recycle bin?
Ahmetdoesreal
Do you have hidden files enabled and if you enabled them did you disable hide important system files? Maybe windows just fills that space with pagefile and maybe hibernation memory
Hattix
Files you don’t have access to. Even if you run as admin, if you don’t have access via the NTFS ACLS, you can’t enumerate those files.
iRyanStone
Update: ran a cmd command “chkdsk D: /f /r” which seems to have corrected the issue. I don’t know what the command does (check for bad sectors or something?) but i hope it has not deleted any important stuff which i cannot see?
Did you change the cluster size when you originally formatted the disk? The default I believe is 4k. if you make it big and store small files you can waste a lots of space and can create the situation where the “Size” and Size on Disk can vary significantly.
Download [Spacesniffer](https://github.com/redtrillix/SpaceSniffer/releases) and run as admin. That will scan the drive for all files and present it to you in a easy to interpret visual style that’s also in realtime too. The bigger the segment it takes up visually, the more space it’s occupying. I don’t know about a secondary drive, but most of the time it’s Windows occupying space automatically by things like the pagefile (which is usually at least half of your total memory capacity) and Windows Hybernate which stores your current computer state in one file called the hiberfile.sys. Both of those things usually occur on the C drive though not on a secondary drive. Either way, Spacesniffer will tell you.
12 Comments
I have tried using Windirstat and space sniffer, both of them show that 18 gb is occupied
Recycle bin?
Do you have hidden files enabled and if you enabled them did you disable hide important system files?
Maybe windows just fills that space with pagefile and maybe hibernation memory
Files you don’t have access to. Even if you run as admin, if you don’t have access via the NTFS ACLS, you can’t enumerate those files.
Update: ran a cmd command “chkdsk D: /f /r” which seems to have corrected the issue. I don’t know what the command does (check for bad sectors or something?) but i hope it has not deleted any important stuff which i cannot see?
use cmd prompt and run diskmgr
Ghosts.
Try a Disk Cleanup
Install and run WinDirStat as admin.
https://windirstat.net/
Did you change the cluster size when you originally formatted the disk? The default I believe is 4k. if you make it big and store small files you can waste a lots of space and can create the situation where the “Size” and Size on Disk can vary significantly.
https://preview.redd.it/7ickunfy7vhb1.png?width=444&format=png&auto=webp&s=3a37d40b9a0abcd9b963f3f1cd637794157e5ad2
Download [Spacesniffer](https://github.com/redtrillix/SpaceSniffer/releases) and run as admin. That will scan the drive for all files and present it to you in a easy to interpret visual style that’s also in realtime too. The bigger the segment it takes up visually, the more space it’s occupying. I don’t know about a secondary drive, but most of the time it’s Windows occupying space automatically by things like the pagefile (which is usually at least half of your total memory capacity) and Windows Hybernate which stores your current computer state in one file called the hiberfile.sys. Both of those things usually occur on the C drive though not on a secondary drive. Either way, Spacesniffer will tell you.
It could also be a pagefile