Windows 10: How do I recover lost invisible drive space taken up by Windows Store/Gamepass apps from a...

Hi all,


I have a 1TB SSD which currently has around 200GB of its capacity being taken up by "invisible" files.


I had a weird situation the other day with my main OS disk, causing me to have to reinstall Windows 10 without being able to make a backup or any restore points, so a fresh install really.


No biggie aside from the files I lost, but that's not the issue here. Easily done. The new fresh windows install meant I had to reinstall some of my Gamepass games.


Setting the default install location from C:\ to E:\ my 1TB storage SSD prompted a popup that said it had found files from a different device, and these would have to be deleted. So I okayed it, set the new default install location, and proceeded to reinstall my games.


But when I took a closer look at my drive capacity, I can see that there's about ~570GB being taken up by old games and apps installed through other platforms/regular means, so I should have around ~430GB left. However, the drive only shows that I have ~240GB left. That means there's about ~190GB missing.





Now, I had a BUNCH of games installed through Gamepass, so it seems very likely that these games are the culprits and are taking up this amount of space. But I am unable to view these files in any way, shape, or form.


There is no "hidden folder" visible. The new WindowsApps folder only shows the game I have redownloaded and installed currently Hollow Knight and seems empty other than that. Tools like WinDirStat also don't seem to show the files or folders anywhere.


So I can't delete them, while they're just sitting there eating up almost a fifth of my total drive capacity.


Are there any fixes for this? I'm more than happy to reinstall these games, so they don't need to be saved or anything. I just need to get rid of them to get my space back.


Thanks in advance,


Sincerely,

Zaerin

:)

 

Lost space of Pen Drive

Hello,

Thank you for bringing up your query on Microsoft Community.

We regret the inconvenience caused to you.

• 
  Have you tried connecting to a different computer?
  

I suggest you to connect the USB flash drive to a different computer and check.

First back up all the data from your USB drive to another location.

I suggest you to connect the USB flash drive to a different computer and check.

Let us try the following steps, and check if it helps.

Step 1: I suggest you to refresh the drive letter and then try to rescan the drives that are connect to the computer and check.

To refresh drive letter:

• Open Computer Management (Local).
• In the console tree, click Computer Management (Local), click
  Storage, and then click Disk Management.
  
• Click Action, and then click Refresh.
  
• Once you have refreshed connect the new zip drive and to update hardware information, click Rescan Disks instead.
  

Step 2: For unallocated space on USB drive

• 
  Press the Windows key, and type Diskpart.
  
• 
  Click the result to open the DiskPart command prompt window.
  
• 
  In the command prompt window, type list disk and hit Enter.
  
• 
  The removable USB drive or hard disk will be shown under
  Disk 1.
  
• 
  Type in the following commands and hit Enter.
  

select disk 1

Clean

create partition primary

• 
  The first command selects your removable USB drive.
  
• 
  The Clean command deletes all the current partitions present on the USB drive.
  
• 
  The Create primary partition creates a fresh partition and allocates all the unallocated space on this fresh partition.
  
• 
  Type Exit to close the command prompt window.
  
• 
  Unplug your USB drive and plug it back again.
  

Hope it helps.

Let us know the status, we are glad to assist you further.

 

How can I free up space taken up by an incomplete Microsoft Store download?

Found the solution. Steps I used to fix this:

1. Open the C:\Program Files\WindowsApps folder, which is where the Windows Store puts its downloads. The WindowsApps folder isn't permissioned to normal users, so this has to be done using some utility that's being run as administrator (either a command prompt window, or some other file manager like 7zip; h/t ManSamVampire for the 7zip suggestion). DO NOT assign ownership of the WindowsApps folder to your own user account to gain access to it, as doing so will cause major problems and can't be easily undone (h/t Ramhound's answer for this warning).
   
2. Sort the subfolders inside WindowsApps by the date they were last modified; this will let you easily find the folders that have recently had new stuff put into them.
   
3. In my case, the offending subfolder was called MSIXVC, which is apparently a type of installer used by the Windows Store. Inside, I had an anomalous 37GB file created last night with no file extension, called "8BBF2763-A1C6-4F1B-96CA-B79DD5FDA4EE". Given that this file was enormous, created at the right time, and in a subfolder suggesting it was an installer, I concluded that this was the droid I was looking for.
   
4. From within your run-as-administrator utility, delete the offending file. I deleted the ginormous, bafflingly-named file from the MSIXVC folder, and lo and behold I had all my disk space back!
   

Now redownloading and installing Outer Worlds. This time I'll know better than to turn off my computer partway through.

 

Recover files from Flash drive

Does not work on a windows pc which is what the OP probably intended

windows by default does not have HFS and HFS+ based hard drives.
Able to perform retrieval on both HFS and HFS+ based hard drives. and so will not work with windows

thanks for the effort