We've all been there, one day you open the File Explorer and you see
that you don't have nearly as much free storage space as you thought.
You might have an idea of what the culprits might be, but there could be others that you
never thought of. So in this video, I'm going to be going over, in no particular order,
five unexpected causes of a full hard drive or SSD.
And you'll see some pro tips on finding exactly what the problem is as well. Before we jump in,
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Now before I get into the top causes, let me quickly show you how to easily figure out what
the cause is for your computer specifically, so you can actually make use of the list.
And the best way, in my opinion, is to use a free program called WinDirStat.
I've mentioned it before and it basically scans your hard drive or
SSD and visually maps out where all the files are by size and location. So at a quick glance,
you can see what's taking up the most space. Later, I'll also go over some additional tips,
at least in Windows, for how to maximize your storage space.
OK, so let's get into those top five reasons. And the first one we have
is one you might not have thought of, which is the Windows Index file.
This is what Windows users when you go to search for a file,
and it basically stores a bunch of info about files and folders on your computer. Depending
on how many files you have and what indexing settings you use, this thing can be huge. With me
for example, at one point I did a scan and it was taking up over 100 gigabytes.
Now, in my case, I had basically enabled Windows to index every file on my computer,
which is not the default. So yours probably isn't that big, but still, it might be bigger
than you think. You can find the index file at this path, and it's just called Windows.edb.
If you do think your Windows Index is too big, you can search for "indexing options" in the
Start Menu, and if you hit "modify", you can uncheck directories so they won't be indexed.
So if you have certain drives or folders that you know contain a ton of files,
but you won't ever need to search through them, then you can just disable them there.
Next up, we have a multi parter because I'll have some extra specific examples for it,
but the main point is the AppData folders for programs.
If you seen my video explaining the app data folders, you know that this is basically where
programs will store files for a particular user, or the program itself may be installed there.
And these usually are not temporary files,
either. So the unexpected thing is that even if you download and install a program,
even if the program itself isn't that big, it might create huge files over time. So it's one
to be aware of, and when looking at the directory sizes, it's likely to be one that stands out.
Now, a specific example I want to point out is one almost no one knows about, which is the "File
System" directory in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge or any other Chromium based browser.
This is located in your AppData/Local folder. And then for Google Chrome,
it's under a Google/Chrome/User Data/Default/File System. For Edge,
instead of Google/Chrome, it's Microsoft/Edge. You see, all of these browsers have a dedicated folder
that allows web services to store files there. These might be used for web apps, or your browser
may actually be using it as a download location for all files, not your actual downloads folder.
Sometimes, the browser will treat it like a temporary directory and delete some of the stuff
after it closes or not, and some old web apps you use might have stored stuff in there that you
don't even know about. All right, onto the next one, we have the Temp folder in the AppData Local
Directory. I'm considering this one separate to the last because this folder is a shared location
where most programs are going to put their temporary files and plenty of these files
might stick around a while. That's not necessarily bad because programs need to make temporary files,
but it becomes a problem when you have a bunch of space being taken up by programs you barely use
or never use, but their files are still there. Now that being said,
don't just go and delete everything in there. Apparently, some programs may store
important stuff in there, surprisingly. What I do is just look to see if there are any particularly
massive folders in there, and then look in it to see what it is, and decide if I want it.
There are some in mine that are relatively large, but it looks like they're for Visual Studio,
for example, which I do want to keep. So doesn't mean you have to delete it just because
it's taking up space. And as always, follow the general rule, that if you don't know what does,
don't delete it. Now let's talk about the recycle bin and not for the reason you think.
I mean yes, the recycle bin may indeed be a huge storage hog if you've never cleared it out.
If you want to see how much space it's taking up total, the easiest way is probably to search
for the Disk Cleanup tool built into windows and just scan the main drive C:, and it will
show the size. Or if you're using WinDirStat it will show it in the root directory of the drive.
But the main reason I want to bring up the recycle bin is a misunderstood feature I
see people talking about, that even I was wrong about. If you right click and go to
properties for the Recycle Bin, you'll see an option that says custom size and
maximum size in megabytes. And like literally everyone else, you probably assumed that
that means that would be the maximum size of the recycle bin total before it starts deleting old
stuff. But no, what that feature actually sets is the maximum file size of any given single file you
delete, and whether it should go into the recycle bin at all. If you've ever seen that warning that
"this file is too big for the recycle bin", that's what this setting is for.
I know it's really dumb, it should be more specific. So what I did is set the max size
here to six gigabytes, but you can set it to whatever you want so that nothing going into
the recycle bin would be too massive. And you can still always go in there and just Sort By size
and just delete the biggest stuff, so you can keep the smaller files way longer just in case.
Just keep in mind that the Recycle Bin folder is actually a combination of the recycle bins
from all your drives, so make sure you enable the "Original Location" column to see which
drive a file was on, if you're trying to free up space on one [drive] specifically,
and finally, we have one that is actually pretty expected,
but I figured I'd still mention it because it sneaks up on you, which are games.
I know it's no secret that games are huge these days, but if you're like me,
if you beat a game, you don't think to uninstall it immediately after, and you end up forgetting
about it. That's again where something like WinDirStat comes in handy, because
huge directories become immediately obvious. And you might not have remembered otherwise.
For me, I forgot I had installed Cyberpunk on this drive, so that
huge block became really obvious. But single, huge files aren't always the biggest culprit.
A lot of times it's a ton of medium sized files that really add up. So let me go over
some of the other best places to clear out some space. one is the Downloads folder,
which I personally treat pretty much as my own personal temporary files folder.
What I usually do to clear out space in here, is just sort by the largest files
and go through and delete anything that's more than 100 megabytes or so. Another advanced tip
is to take advantage of Symlinks. If you haven't seen my video about symbolic links in windows,
check it out. They're basically like super shortcuts that make a file
actually look like it's in another location, not just a shortcut.
This can be useful if a program doesn't give you the option for where to install it,
or at least some of its large components. You can just move the files to a different drive and then
create a Symlink to that folder, so it will still work and not take up any space on the first drive.
And the final tip is, most cloud storage services these days offer some kind of option to keep your
files in the cloud, but only show a virtual version on your drive until you go to open it.
So if you have some files that you rarely use and don't mind waiting to be downloaded,
that could be an option . So I think that pretty much covers it. Now,
you should at least know how to easily figure out where all your storage has gone.
Thanks again to Guardio for sponsoring this video. Be sure to visit Guardio, that's Guard.io/ThioJoe
to install the extension and scan your browser for threats for free. And that link is also in
the description. If you want to keep watching, the next video you should check out is the one
where I was talking about that AppData folder and what those are all even about.
I'll put that link right here. And if you want to subscribe, also be sure to click
the bell for notifications. So thanks so much for watching guys, and I'll see you in the next one.