SOLVED Why is there 300GB being used on my Windows 10 drive?

[whiwo]

I have a 1 TB drive that's been partitioned into two separate drives of 465GB each. One has Windows 8.1 (I use to work from home) and the other is Windows 10 for personal use and my preferred operating system.

However, the drive with 10 installed on it has a whopping 300GB of used space and I can't figure out where it's coming from. I've cleaned out all unnecessary files with the cleanmgr but that was a blip.

I also deleted all of the restore points, which is set to use 10% of the drive's capacity.

My documents, download, video, music and photo folders are a combined 13GB and I figure the Windows 10 installation is taking up maybe another 20GB for a combined 33GB out of 465GB.

So what exactly is the rest of the 267GB comprised of and where is it? The load times are way slower than they should be and this is just something I can't wrap my head around.

I haven't figured in the software installs, but even then it's not that much more.

Any suggestions?

 

[BretWin10]

my everyday pc has Windows 10 (Build 10240)
Windows 10 (C) shows its using 60GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) shows Windows Folder is using 16.1GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) the other folders are using 33.9GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) files listed below folders are using 5.46GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) total showing 55.46GB (no idea whats using the other 4.54GB)

my secondary pc has Windows 10 evaluation copy (Build 10547)
Windows 10 (C) shows its using 39GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) shows Windows Folder is using 13.7GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) the other folders are using 6.82GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) files listed below folders are using 3.12GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) total showing 23.64GB (no idea whats using the other 15.36GB)

I would check the Windows 10 (C) drive using 300GB with :

Disk Clean-up (Clean up system files) ..... see what the 'Total amount of disk space you gain'
check the description for each catagory, before deciding to use the clean-up

Comman Prompt, Run as Administrator :

sfc /scannow

Dism /online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

see if the above scans throw any light on the 300GB use

I imagine a fresh install of Windows 10 should use about the same as your Windows 8.1
(approx 40GB)

 

[clifford_cooley]

Use this utility to find out what is taking up all your space.

WinDirStat (Windows Directory Statistics)

WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for various versions of Microsoft Windows.
Note: if you are looking for an alternative for Linux, you are looking for KDirStat (apt-get install kdirstat on Debian-derivatives) and for MacOS X it would be Disk Inventory X or GrandPerspective.

Please visit the WinDirStat blog for more up-to-date information about the program.

On start up, it reads the whole directory tree once and then presents it in three useful views:

• The directory list, which resembles the tree view of the Windows Explorer but is sorted by file/subtree size,
• The treemap, which shows the whole contents of the directory tree straight away,
• The extension list, which serves as a legend and shows statistics about the file types.

 

[whiwo]

my everyday pc has Windows 10 (Build 10240)
Windows 10 (C) shows its using 60GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) shows Windows Folder is using 16.1GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) the other folders are using 33.9GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) files listed below folders are using 5.46GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) total showing 55.46GB (no idea whats using the other 4.54GB)

my secondary pc has Windows 10 evaluation copy (Build 10547)
Windows 10 (C) shows its using 39GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) shows Windows Folder is using 13.7GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) the other folders are using 6.82GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) files listed below folders are using 3.12GB
This PC > Local Disk (C) total showing 23.64GB (no idea whats using the other 15.36GB)

I would check the Windows 10 (C) drive using 300GB with :

Disk Clean-up (Clean up system files) ..... see what the 'Total amount of disk space you gain'
check the description for each catagory, before deciding to use the clean-up

Comman Prompt, Run as Administrator :

sfc /scannow

Dism /online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

see if the above scans throw any light on the 300GB use

I imagine a fresh install of Windows 10 should use about the same as your Windows 8.1
(approx 40GB)

@BretWin 10 thanks for the suggestion. I did the scan first and it found errors and repaired most but that didn't fix the issue. When I tried the RestoreHealth option it could not be completed due to the fact in my quest to rid myself of unnecessary files, I deleted the .iso image of Windows 10 in my documents because I was uncertain as to where it came from (I performed a clean install from USB). Frankly, I don't mind that since "Refresh" option in Windows 8.1 never worked for me and I have little faith this would have.

However, see my response below because it's now been solved!

 

[whiwo]

Use this utility to find out what is taking up all your space.

WinDirStat (Windows Directory Statistics)

@clifford_cooley thanks for the suggestion! I found the culprit. I'm not a fan of cloud computing but thought I'd give it a shot. When I was reading up on the new Groove app, it stated to upload your music files to OneDrive or just copy them into the drive.

Uploading was impossible so I just copied the whole lot of them over to OneDrive foolishly thinking they were going to the cloud when in fact it was all local and now stands to reason why I could never get the app to work on my phone (duh).

Previously, I had hidden the OneDrive folder since I thought I had deleted everything and disabled it due to the fact I wasn't using it. What I deleted was in the cloud, what wasn't was on my hard drive. WinDirStat helped me find that out really quick. Thanks for the suggestion! Issue resolved.