Windows 10: Hard drive size puzzle after Anniversary Upgrade

I have a situation which I am totally unable to explain.

I have a Dell 1750 notebook and a Dell 660s. Both run the 32-bit Windows 10 on a 64-bit hardware architecture.
The only significant difference in installed software is that the Dell-660s has Microsoft Flight Simulator installed.

Obviously, the sizes of the C: drive should reflect a small difference because of Flight Simulator and some support software for it. Also for minor differences in hardware and hardware support software. No user data is stored on either hard drive.

Since the Anniversary Upgrade (perhaps coincidental) the Dell 660s seems to have a huge amount of additional material on C:. And I can't find it. Prior to that, they were within any logical differences, a gig or two. If I total the space of the folders on C:, they still are. But File Explorer shows a great difference. Full backup images (Acronis) of the entire hard drives, both with the same compression level, are 18gB vs 23gB, supporting the File Explorer number for C:total total usage.

$GetCurrent, and Windows10Upgrade are not removed by Cleanup System Files. For some reason Windows.old was removed on the Dell 1750 but will not go away on the Dell 660s.

Recap: (See below for details)

35.5gB --- 54.5gb ------- C:
36gB ----- 38.6gB ------- Rough totals adding the sizes of the large (gB) individual folders.
-0.5gB --- 15.9gB ------- Difference I can't find or explain

Can anyone suggest what I may be missing, where I can find it, and how to get rid of it if it isn't necessary?

Here are the detail numbers for the folders on C:with "Show hidden files, folders and drives" checked and "Hide protected operating system files" unchecked.

d/n/s: difference, but no sweat
n/p: not present on this computer

35.5gB ------- 54.5gb ----- C: (Wow!!!!)
246kB -------- 246kB ------ $GetCurrent
821kB -------- 129B -------- $RECYCLE.BIN (d/n/s)
20.7mB ------ 17.7mB ----- Boot (d/n/s)
440kB -------- 440kb ------- Brother
0 --------------- 0 -------------- Config.Msi
334mB ------ 12kB --------- Dell (d/n/s) (notebook support)
a link on both Documents and Settings
606B --------- 0 -------------- Downloads from Firefox (d/n/s)
168mB ------ n/p ------------ Drivers (d/n/s) (notebook support)
256kB ------- n/p ------------ EFI (d/n/s) (not sure why it is there)
n/p ------------ 24.8mB ----- Flight One Software (d/n/s)
97.1kB ------ 97.1kB ------ inetpub
0 -------------- n/p ------------ Installer
413kB ------ 74.4kB ------- Intel (d/n/s)
n/p ----------- 1.86mB ------ MININT (d/n/s)
n/p ----------- 0 --------------- MSOCache
10.4gB ---- 12.5gB ------- Program Files (d/n/s)
751mB ---- 681mB ------- Program Data (d/n/s)
0 ------------ 0 ---------------- Recovery
0 ------------ 0 ---------------- System Volume Information
4.26mB --- 2.48mB ------ Users (d/n/s)
1.37mB -- 1.37mB ------- VC_RED.cab
139kb ----- 0 --------------- WCH.CN (d/n/s)
10.2gB --- 10.gB --------- Windows (d/n/s)
n/p --------- 740kB -------- Windows.old (d/n/s)
15.4mB -- 15.5mB ------ Windows10Upgrade (d/n/s)

(Edited to make table a bit more readable and to clarify some comments.)


:)

 

Windows 10 anniversary update won't recognise my external hard drive

Before installing the update I was able to plug my Transcend and Western Digital external hard drives and access the easily. After installing the anniversary update i cannot.

I rolled back the upgrade and my external hard drives work fine

I reinstalled the upgrade and I could not access them.

chkdsk in cmd recognises them and their sizes fine

so now determining that the update is the cause is there a patch available or will there be one released soone

 

Windows 10 can not optimize HDD, says it is a SSD Help

I have ran chkdsk and its ok .

The problem started when I upgraded to windows 10 anniversary.

Before update to anniversary could defrag hard drive after anniversary update showed as SSD and could not defrag.

Help

Jeff

 

When you run disk clean after first scan have you then hit system files button which will rescan and remove 15gig

 

Thanks for the quick response.

I have even repeated that several times. The Windows.old, which I presume is the 15gig you mean, went away on the Dell 1750 but remains at 744kB on the other computer. I have a feeling this somehow has left some "phantom" usage out there that I cannot find or remove.

 

Install Treesize Free. It will show you what is occupying space on your drive.

 

You can download CCleaner to remove the files/folder which cleaning windows.old folder left behind, I had to do this.

 

Thanks. I tried that. C: went from 54.1gB to 53.1gb. Not much different than a normal Disk Cleanup after a few days. It probably got a few things Firefox had stashed in caches that Disk Cleanup doesn't get. I saw a bunch of references to those flash by. But other than that, doesn't address my concern. I'm really still looking for another 15gig or so.

 

UnCleaner - Josh Cell Softwares get rid of a lot of stuff and its free

 

Thanks. It took me a few days to get around to this since I was also spending time on finding out why W10 killed Streets & Trips on me (still don't know). But this gets me closer on this problem. I still have no idea why the problem exists or how to correct it.

First, I had no idea that File Explorer could hide stuff from me even with "Show hidden files, folders and drives" checked and "Hide protected operating system files" unchecked. That alone seems to be yet another big problem with File Explorer.







The 21.7gig on the 660s vs the 4.9gB on the 1745 surely has to hold the 15gig I have been looking for. But how to be sure of that, and how to get rid of it is a real problem. Most of the structures have cryptic names, so no clue there. None of the "cleaners" seem to touch it. And not being an insider, I have no idea what is valid in there, what is throw away, and what will happen if I do toss stuff at random. Obviously, I can keep tossing and restoring until the system crashes and restore to the image before that. Reminds me of Russian Roulette. The system might run for months until some system or software action needs something I removed. The Kaboom! And by then, my 4-cycle scheme of keeping images may be long gone.

Any ideas on the structure here, and perhaps insight into a known fallacy in what is there would be helpful. Maybe this is just one of those things I will have to live with until another major update might wipe things clean.

(I only show numbers on two computers since those have nearly identical software on them. Another computer without some of the graphics-heavy software has much smaller numbers, the total size of the content on C: is proportionally smaller at 38gig. So the problem seems isolated to the 660s.)

 

System Volume Information is where Restore Points are kept. This backs up certain files and system configurations so they can be restored later.

You can purge this if you really want by typing "system restore" in Cortana, then choosing Create a Restore Point, then clicking on Configure, and finally Delete

 

Streets & Trip was deleted because it was discontinued. If you have any software on the hard drive during the upgrade, it will be deleted. The graphical size programs will show you what is taking up what space. Fire fox and no other programs are hiding anything. If you ran Disk Cleanup and choose System, then cleared out old restore points, checked all boxes, whatever would be taking up space from the migration and the old install would be gone.

It is suggested that after you do an in place upgrade, that you do a Clean install of Windows 10, so that it starts with a clean slate and you do not have problems that were from the old install roll into the new.

 

Thanks, I'll look into that. I am not sure why one out of three computers would gain 15gB at all, let alone as restore points due to the upgrade, but I do find that with W10 some things that are "impossible" happen, as well as some things that should work, don't.

(I am beginning to think I just need to roll that particular computer back to my image before the Anniversary Upgrade and let MS try again.)

 

I hate to say it but almost everything you say here makes no sense at all. If you can, you will have to explain it beyond anything your already have posted.

I have all kinds of software on my hard drive. Some of it also has been discontinued. That doesn't mean it won't run. Streets & Trips is not part of the OS. It was not removed, just broken. Somehow, the registry is incorrect and cannot be corrected, even by reinstallation. It should just have been left alone to run exactly as it did on W10 before the Anniversary Upgrade. It has been there through at least Vista, W7 and, until August, on W10. No problems. An OS "upgrade" to a new version of the same product should be just that. New stuff wrapped around the old. It doesn't, if done properly, require me to do anything.

I am looking into restore points, but neither of my other two computers, all configured to do restore points, have anything like the 15gB growth since the "upgrade". For that matter, on any major upgrade, not just a "patch", Windows should clear out obsolete restore points. After all, they would roll the new system back out. W10 has other provisions to do that, although many of us have found out that it is also sometimes defective.

If W10 is so bad that I need to reinstall all my old software by following each update with a clean install, that means at least 6 days of sitting at my computers getting to where they were before the "upgrade". Not gonna happen!

 

Follow up: You hit the problem, but the reaction was even stranger than I expected. To test the premise, I recorded the size of SVI and it was 22.5gB. I created a restore point to try to find the size of my average restore point and to see how SVI would change. The total size of SVI became 2gB!!!!! And it did not remove any of the listed restore points that have occurred since the Anniversary Upgrade. My total size for C: dropped from 53gB to 36.1gB.

I can't explain the original problem except that the Anniversary Update screwed up and did not clean out some stuff it was supposed to take care of. Creating a new restore point made it evaluate what was stored there and it "fixed" itself.

Thank you again, for pointing me in the right direction. During the process I also found some useful tools from some of the other posts which helped diagnose the problem. Ten Forums is the place for W10 problem resolution.