Windows 10: Where Is The Missing Drive Space?

A friend up the bush has a laptop I'm looking at with Team Viewer.
It needs OS updates and MS reports there's not enough room.
Seems it only has one drive and that's a Samsung BGND3R which seems to have only a 30G capacity.
But I can't find the 30G.
I find these:
ProgFiles: 1.79G
ProgFilesx86: 1.36G
Users: 1.48G
Windows: 12.9G
Windows.old: 123KB
Windows.UPD: 3.24G
eSupport: 1.55G
Perflogs: 0
That's the only eight directories he's got and there's no more files in C: but it reports C: as
Used: 28.9G
and free only megabytes.
Is this thing viable with a 30G drive?
Where's the missing space?
p.s. I found hidden folder Program.Data: 2.82G
p.p.s. that was a drag copying those figures. how can I cut and paste that directory/size list I wonder?

:)

 

The drive where windows is is locked?

I reset my BIOS to defaults and that seemed to work.

 

The drive where windows is is locked?

I left my computer on overnight and when I went to it this morning it was in system recovery. And I found out that the c drive was locked. I tried doing bootrec but the commands were not found.

 

There are some hidden files on every installation of Windows. The best thing to do with tablets that come with the small SSD drives is to add a MicroSDXC card in the slot provided on most tablets, use as the same on SmartPhones, then when prompted point to that card for the update installs. I put 64GB cards in mine to install programs on and save files, will get 128GB when the price comes down more. What they look like:
micro sdxc at DuckDuckGo

 

Use a utility like WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics to visualize disk usage easier. There's no simple way to copy+paste from it but you can save the report to a PDF or just take a screenshot.

 

Thanks for that. This is a notebook computer, not a tablet. I guess I could get him to put a USB stick in it...

But there's 10G missing.... where is it? Perhaps if I could find the files that are using it I could shave them down..

ah... windirstat... good idea... I'll download that and run it....

and what's an alternative file transfer prog do you think? there's file transfer with TeamViewer but it is just not working.

Neither the file transfer screen itself, I can't get anything to transfer and not the 'drag and drop' they say one can do between their explorer screen and one's own on the local computer.

maybe I should set up ftp on his computer so's I can use filezilla.... i wonder how much hassle that'd be.. big time I think, no ftp without enabling IIS and this thing being so short of space and begging for updates I wouldn't doubt I'd get all kinds of hassles on the way there....

 

One possibility is Restore points. Restore points are hidden from view, they're kept in the hidden and inaccessible 'System Volume Information' folder.

You can see how much is used for restore points in System Protection configuration. Here you can also set the maximum to be used and delete all restore points.

*Arrow Change System Protection Max Storage Size for Drive in Windows 10

 

I used windirstat. It's a pity you can't get a file listing from it.. can't copy the output at all I think.
But I found the missing space all seems to be in Recovery and most of it in Recovery/Customizations.
I don't suppose I should delete it.

Is there any way I can ask his machine to tell me what machine it is? Then I could look it up on the web. Learn something about its hardware, drives, what ports it has. Can't ask him. He's not there.

I don't know about that system restore thing. I took a read of the link but it all got a bit overpowering.

I need 8G I think, the update thing just told me. It is taking its time right now doing a disk cleanup. that's not going to get us far. a few megabytes i reckon.

what's the basic problem here? 30G is not enough for a win10 install?

 

Run msinfo32 (the System Information app). Everything you need to know should be shown there. In particular, the System Summary should tell you the manufacturer and model. If your lucky, there may also be the System SKU, an identifier that some manufacturers use to show which variant within the model range it is.

 

System restore saves copies of required system files in case you need to restore your PC to a previous state. Restore points may be created automatically, and if left unchecked can easily add up to many GB.

If you run Disk Clean-up and click on the 'clean system files' button, a second tab appears on the resulting clean-up page - 'More Options'. On this tab is a button to delete all but the latest restore point. If you have not already done so, use Disk Clean-up's 'clean system files' option, it can find more to clean up more than a standard clean-up does.

Alternatively, open Settings > System > Storage. Click on the 'This PC' usage bar to get a more detailed breakdown, here click on 'System & reserved' for even more detail. Amongst other things, this will show how much space system restore is using, with a button to 'Manage system restore'.

A typical install of Windows 10 uses 15-20GB. An update to the next version of Windows (eg. Fall Creators Update) requires as much again to store the previous system in the windows.old folder. On systems with small drives you can use external storage for this, usually a USB stick formatted with ntfs, but it's not something you can do with TeamViewer, you'd have to be there to plug it in *Sad