Probably, it is not necessary to say that many users of Windows-systems very often notice: the place on the hard drive has the property of significantly decreasing. That gigabyte is gone, then two, then even more ... Why is this happening? If free space is lost on the hard disk , there may be many reasons for this. However, the further material offered for familiarization represents the most basic situations that can be dealt with using several simple methods.
Why does C drive space disappear: possible reasons
In general, it is very difficult to name just one exact reason for such a phenomenon. The whole point is in their totality.
As a rule, the space on drive C disappears (Windows 10 is used or the system is of a lower rank, it doesn’t matter), mainly due to the activity of the system processes of the OS itself, as well as when a user clutters a computer.
However, the most common factors causing the appearance of such situations include the following:
- Too many rollback points
- constant installation of updates;
- use of additional space by swap and hibernation files;
- the presence of temporary application files;
- remnants of incorrectly deleted programs;
- system disk errors with the appearance of bad sectors;
- exposure to viruses.
Based on the above reasons, when free space on the C drive disappears, you can use regular tools to free it, and use special optimizer programs or uninstallers. But then the focus will be mainly on the tools of the operating system itself.
Recovery Points and Backups
Of course, creating recovery points or backups in the background is a good thing (you never need to restore Windows after an unexpected failure). However, you yourself understand, all this information is stored in a specially reserved area of the hard drive.
Therefore, if space is missing on drive C, Windows 7 or any other system allows such points or copies to be deleted. This is done through the standard menu for cleaning the system partition, which can be accessed through the PCM menu on the computer icon with the transition to the general security settings tab. There is a special button, after clicking on which the items to be cleaned will be deleted.
Updates
In the fact that the free space on the hard disk is lost, constantly installed updates may be guilty. Naturally, it is believed that disabling their installation is not worth it, but here it is not so simple.
As recent events with the WannaCry and Petya.A viruses have shown, Microsoft specialists quickly released special service packs that supposedly allow not only to neutralize the threat, but at least prevent its penetration into the system.
In addition, some packages for Windows 7 can cause malfunctions in the OS itself. In this case, it is recommended to remove updates that cause errors, and then turn off their automatic installation. In the best case, you can select the search option and offer downloads and installations.
Virtual memory
The hard disk space may have been lost due to improper virtual memory configuration, for which the system component pagefile.sys, called the swap file, is responsible.
To check its size, you need to enter the performance section. Automatic assignment of its size is not always recommended. In principle, if you have 8 GB of RAM or more, you can turn off the use of virtual memory altogether. Believe me, the system’s performance will not suffer from this (tested on a laptop with a Core i7-2620M processor with a frequency of 2.7 GHz and 8 GB of RAM).
Hibernation file
Another reason that the C disk space is lost is the constant use of the transition to hibernation mode.
This mode works due to the hiberfil.sys system component and saves the data of the running programs and their currently used settings, again, backing up the system partition disk space and RAM. By and large, for such situations it is better to use sleep mode, rather than hibernation, thereby deleting such a huge file.
To do this, in the command console you need to register the line powercfg / h off. By the way, after applying such a command, a link to the hibernation mode disappears even in the main menu of the start button. Fundamentally, on computers with small disks, using this mode is not recommended at all.
Temporary program files
There is only one problem, because of which the space on the C drive is lost - undeleted temporary application files. In this case, we are talking not only about web browsers, in which you need to clear the cache, cookies, visit history, and delete all other temporary components, for example, in the form of saved image thumbnails.
As one of the most common situations, you can cite the example of installing some application directly from the archiver window without first unpacking it to the hard drive. At the same time, after closing the archiver, you can immediately notice that, apparently, it independently unpacked everything that was inside the archive, which is comparable in size to the full size of the data there.
Another problem that the C disk space is missing is Photoshop or any other graphics or video editor. Such utilities create their own swap file, completely ignoring the basic system settings. As a result, the user receives an object of a rather impressive size, which can be several times larger than the pagefile.
C drive space disappears: remnants of remote applications
Another problem is that uninstalling programs own Windows uninstaller does not show itself in the best way. This concerns the fact that he does not always delete absolutely everything that was connected with the program. And if earlier, it was proposed to remove some elements on their own, now the system simply reports that the residual components will be removed during the next reboot.
But nothing of the kind happens. Files and folders remain, as well as system registry keys (and OS loading speed depends on its size). In this case, the best solution would be to use special utilities that provide in-depth scanning of residual elements (Revo Uninstaller, iObit Uninstaller and the like).
Bad Sectors
Unfortunately, the appearance of errors in the system partition, after which the free space on the hard disk is reduced, is no exception. The trouble is that bad sectors can sometimes be completely corny not read or not recognized.
Thus, the system simply ignores them. Alternatively, you can run a hard drive check, but it is advisable to do this not using a regular tool, but from the command line, writing chkdsk c: / x / f / r or some variation in it. Such a technique works both in the current system and when booting from removable media.
If the hard drive has physical damage, there is nothing to be done, although it is believed that the most extreme and last way to restore the drive can be HDD Regenerator, which (according to its creators) can remagnetize the hard drive, which, however, causes quite serious doubt.
Viruses
Finally, even many viruses can attack disk space. This is most often associated with advertising threats, spies or spam. Here the problem lies already in the fact that most of these hijackers are able to integrate into the operating system and all browsers, after which a huge amount of computer debris remains on the disk both in the form of temporary files and in the form of its own elements.
It is best to deal with such things with such disk programs (Rescue Disk), which can start even before loading the OS and detect even deeply hidden or integrated threats into the system.
Instead of an afterword
As you can see, there can be quite a lot of reasons, as well as ways to eliminate the consequences. And so it’s absolutely impossible to immediately determine what became the root cause of the reduction in free space. Therefore, you have to act, to put it mildly, at random, figuring out what this situation may be related to initially.
But do not despair. At least one of the proposed methods will work. True, the actions will have to be carried out according to the above list and in the exact sequence in which they were described.
As a definite conclusion, it can be noted that for the most part the loss of space on the hard drive is associated with the functioning of system processes and programs, as well as incorrect removal of the application, after which a lot of computer garbage remains in the system, which can be very difficult to get rid of. However, optimizer programs can also be used, although even here no one can give a full guarantee of deleting residual files and folders. There is visibility of cleaning, but does it all really look so good?
Naturally, virus attacks cannot be ruled out, but they do not always happen, and errors on the hard disk can only be associated with short-term malfunctions, for example, during a sudden power outage or forced restart when it freezes (especially during the installation of service packs).