Where did my diskspace go (19H1 update via media creation tool)?

[MrDoh]

After doing a fresh install of the 19H1 update and cleaning up the user and system disk usage and turning off hibernation, looked at the diskspace used on my C: drive. And I see that about 28.5GB is used. Seems like a larger number than usual for a fresh install, so I ran windirstat. That shows a 7GB "unknown" area on my disk. Okay, we'll see about that *smile*.

So my next step was to run Knoppix to see if this unknown space was in the system volume area, as sometimes happens. Not there. So I downloaded JAM's TreeSize Free (Administrator) to see if I could find a trace of that lost 7GB. What I see is that it has these sizes for the disk space used:

30.9GB size, 24.2GB allocated

Now I'm not sure what this means. It looks like there's a lot less "allocated" than the "size". So somehow there's a lost 6GB between what's "allocated" on the disk, and the "size". Haven't run into this before. I did look over the TreeSize scan of the C: drive, and didn't see anything else there that would account for this large chunk of lost space.

Anyone know anything about this discrepancy between the "size" and the "allocated" amount? I haven't been on the Windows 10 Insider program for a long time, so if this is something that I should expect I wouldn't know *smile*. Almost seems like it make a fixed size area of about 31GB, and only used 24.2GB of that. Doesn't make sense to me, since file systems don't work that way these days (I thought).

Comments?

 

[Bighorn]

That shows a 7GB "unknown" area on my disk.

That's a new feature with Version 1903, reserved space to assure future updates will have sufficient room to work. It will impact those machines such as small Notebooks and Tablets with 32GB drives that actually format to about 27GB. Because of that issue my Dell Inspiron 11 3000 32GB is now running Linux Mint and has 20GB free on the drive.

And to make a larger impact, Version 1903 will not install if it sees a USB Thumb drive, SD card, MicroSDXC card plugged in. I tried it today on the first 2 of 7 I've Upgraded [both Notebooks and Desktops] and did get the warning about a hardware issue so took an alternate route in doing those Upgrades.

 

[MrDoh]

Well, thanks, that may be the answer. More space is reserved than actually used. However, I do have a lot of free space on the C: drive, like about 200GB, so the install software shouldn't be afeared that it'll run out of space *smile*. Why it would take 6GB extra and leave 200GB unused is interesting to me. The first time I tried the 19H1 install it did say "Can't tell if there's enough space left to update, try running setup again" or something much like that *smile*. I did run the media creation tool again, and what do you know, the installation finished that time.

Anyways, I'd be interested to read more about the installation process to see why this would happen. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, given how much free disk space that I have. I could see that for a 32GB. disk, that's a pretty marginal size for updating.

Thanks.

 

[Bighorn]

That space being set aside is a lot like the paging/swap file, just there "in case" it becomes needed in the future. In one way it does make sense but the downside is the potentially end-of-life for those machines with the small capacity drives that can't be changed.

 

[Walldoo99]

After doing a fresh install of the 19H1 update and cleaning up the user and system disk usage and turning off hibernation, looked at the diskspace used on my C: drive. And I see that about 28.5GB is used. Seems like a larger number than usual for a fresh install, so I ran windirstat. That shows a 7GB "unknown" area on my disk. Okay, we'll see about that *smile*.

So my next step was to run Knoppix to see if this unknown space was in the system volume area, as sometimes happens. Not there. So I downloaded JAM's TreeSize Free (Administrator) to see if I could find a trace of that lost 7GB. What I see is that it has these sizes for the disk space used:

30.9GB size, 24.2GB allocated

Now I'm not sure what this means. It looks like there's a lot less "allocated" than the "size". So somehow there's a lost 6GB between what's "allocated" on the disk, and the "size". Haven't run into this before. I did look over the TreeSize scan of the C: drive, and didn't see anything else there that would account for this large chunk of lost space.

Anyone know anything about this discrepancy between the "size" and the "allocated" amount? I haven't been on the Windows 10 Insider program for a long time, so if this is something that I should expect I wouldn't know *smile*. Almost seems like it make a fixed size area of about 31GB, and only used 24.2GB of that. Doesn't make sense to me, since file systems don't work that way these days (I thought).

Comments?

You need to run disk cleanup, it's built in to windows. Click start or hit the windows key and type in DISK and it will pop up on top of the list, maybe second. Run that and then click the systems cleanup button. When that gets around to finally opening go do the list and check OLD WINDOWS and the run cleanup. This should clear out 20+ gb If you didn't do this after your last upgrade you might have over 40 GB.

 

[StevenG]

That space, you are talking about is taken up by updated and temp files etc. Go to 'This PC' and right click on your 'C'' drive (or wherever your OP system is installed) then click on 'Properties' then chose 'Disk Cleanup' then, chose 'Cleanup system files' this is where you should have allot of files that are taking up free space and its ok to delete, I do this after every windows update. I enclose a guide (1 to 3) for your information, hope it helps.