Windows 10: Game still taking up 50GB+ of space after deleting

I started installing Sea of Thieves to my new laptop a few days ago, only to find that a massive 100GB of disk space has been taken for a game which lists only 50GB or slightly over, as required for install.


The laptop is for work, however, I fancied testing out the game as a bit of a pastime and to see what my new laptop can do, naturally, out of curiosity.


As the install was taking quite some time, I changed my mind mid-way through and cancelled the installation, only to find that the space reserved for the install had not actually returned to my disk. I thought that perhaps I should finish the installation and properly uninstall the game afterwards. So I restarted the installation, it very quickly returned to its previous progress so I am guessing this is evidence that the installation files remained locally saved and I let the installation finish. At this point, I was 100GB down. I have now uninstalled the game from windows, and I am still 50GB down. There is one single app I personally installed on my laptop, a system clean-up app, storage space requied numbers in KB, minimal.


Also note, the game didn't work when it installed, so no luck trying it out in the end anyway. Insult to injury...


Everything else is stock, along with some HP software. Despite this, my 512GB SSD, with 476GB of usable space, and what should be between 420-430GB of available space this is how much space I had before Sea of Thieves came into the equation, and how much space I remember having available on the laptop from new, allowing for system files is showing at 370GB free space.


Why am I missing 50GB+ of space? In fact, the differential amount is exactly 53 or so GB, the same as the Sea of Thieves install on the Windows Xbox app.


Did the games files go onto my PC twice? I found some other threads on here advising the use of storage sense and deleting temp files. None of these have flagged any cached or temp files of any significance. In fact, system & reserved space is showing at 94.9GB, double the amount it was before I installed the game. Is the game sitting somewhere in the system files?


If anyone is able to help me recover my missing storage space, I would be most grateful. I don't want to have to factory reset the computer over a faulty installation of a single game!


I am not very advanced with computers/windows, there is only so much I can do. Is anyone able to advise?

:)

 

Windows 10: Windows folder takes up 50Gb of space

Hi Alexey,

To help resolve your concern, try the following steps:

• Delete all Temporary Files. In the search box, type
  %Temp%. Under the temporary folder, press CTRL+A to select all temporary files and folders, right-click and then delete all.
• Type optimize in the search box and then select Defragment and Optimize Drives.

3. In the Optimize Drives window, select the drive
(C and then click Analyze for the system to verify how big is the space that needs to be optimized.





4. Let it run and once it's done, click Optimize. (Note: This procedure may take longer depending on the size of the used space.)

5. After optimizing drivers, scan your PC using your antivirus program.

Let us know how it goes.

 

How to delete error reports taking up disk space?

How to delete error reports taking up disk space? Step by step and how to access the directory(ies) needed. Thank you

 

Deleted Windows.old, not enough disk space freed

1. Did you empty the recycle bin ? If not, empty it.
2. Delete the contents under: C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download
   Those are downloaded Windows Updates files and already installed.
3. Open Admin command, copy and paste the line below then run:
   Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup
   This should remove all the no longer used by component store. Will take a while to run.