Please help me figure out where my storage has went...

I

I3eyond

Gawd
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Jan 14, 2006
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With Warlords of Draenor coming out, I have reached a dilemma.

I have a 120GB SSD (111GB available), on which Windows 7 Professional and the game client for World of Warcraft with all current expansions is installed.

I have absolutely no idea how much space WoW with all of its expansions takes (I searched for a while last night with no definitive answer), likewise, something seems very wrong here.

Using WinDirStat, I have done a bit of analysis, and here's what I've found:

World of Warcraft: 35.0GB
Windows: 16.0GB
Users: 12.3GB
<Files>: 14.0GB (pagefile.sys = 8.0GB; hiberfil.sys = 6.0GB)

This comes to 77.3GB.

Now, I understand there will be some odds and ends that will nickle and dime the storage away. But, being that I currently have 20.1GB free of 111GB, that's *seemingly* a lot of "nickle and diming".

Beyond what I listed above, 33.7GB are potentially wasted somewhere; a variance of
13.6GB that surely I can free somehow.

I can post any screenshots necessary of WinDirStat.

Is it looking like I am going to have to get a new SSD just for a single game? :rolleyes:

Regards,
-I3
 
256 or 512 is the lowest I would get. They are getting super cheap.
 
My intention is not to get a new hard drive to have to re-install the entire game, go through rebinding every key, redoing every add-on, etc.

When I bought the 128GB SSD, it was ~2011, so prices on any higher storage units were outrageous.

My goal is to figure out, if possible, a way to free up enough space to install WoD..

Regards,
-I3
 
So you have a 120GB SSD. After conversion BS you have 111GB of usable space.

+111GB
-35GB (WOW)
-16GB (WINDOWS)
-12GB (USERS)
-14GB (Page/Hiberfile)
----------------
34GB left as space. But you say you have 20GB left.


How much space is reserved for System Restore?
 
PornoSatan said:
So you have a 120GB SSD. After conversion BS you have 111GB of usable space.

+111GB
-35GB (WOW)
-16GB (WINDOWS)
-12GB (USERS)
-14GB (Page/Hiberfile)
----------------
34GB left as space. But you say you have 20GB left.


How much space is reserved for System Restore?
Click to expand...

Not sure...

How do I tell?

Regards,
-I3
 
WoW is not 35GB, it's closer to 26GB. You can delete all the misc patch files n' such that accumulate over time. That alone should free up ~9GB for ya.

Beyond that, if you don't hibernate the machine, then disable hibernation by running "powercfg -h off" at the cmd line as an admin and there's another big chunk for you.
 
PornoSatan said:
WinKey + R

sysdm.cpl

Click the System Restore or System Protection tab
Click to expand...

Looks like current usage is 3.52GB on system restore on this drive. Will turning off system restore free that up? And, being so small, is it worth it? Seemingly could be a bad idea, though, I've never had to do a system restore (knock on wood)

cortexodus said:
WoW is not 35GB, it's closer to 26GB. You can delete all the misc patch files n' such that accumulate over time. That alone should free up ~9GB for ya.

Beyond that, if you don't hibernate the machine, then disable hibernation by running "powercfg -h off" at the cmd line as an admin and there's another big chunk for you.
Click to expand...

Never hibernate, so I'll look into that.

Any tips on identifying the miscellaneous patch files, etc.?
 
3.5 GB? Well, that's kinda small. Probably not worth it. The easiest, fastest and most effective way for you to get enough space would be just to disable Hibernation and delete Hiberfil.sys. That's an easy 6GB

Then if you wanted to you could probably go to C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Local Settings\Temp, and delete all of that.

Clean up the patches in the WoW directory. They are probably taking up space.

Right click the C drive and go to Disk Cleanup and see what it says. This might be a great chance for someone to actually use the Compress Old Files option!
 
Woah! I entered "powercfg.exe -h off" into cmd, and went from 21GB to 27.7GB available.

That's certainly a step in the right direction!! :D

Regards,
-I3
 
Run CCleaner, then run Windows Cleanup (check the box for Windows Update Cleanup, that is a relatively new thing). You can also manually delete everything in the Windows/SoftwareDisbribution/Download folder. Leave the WinSxS folder alone, you can't clean that manually without breaking your Windows install.

I've also seen old Content.ie5 folders (the temporary files location for Internet Explorer) seemingly be overlooked by any of these methods for reasons unknown to me, particularly on very old Windows installs; I've been known to turn off hidden system folders and files, run searches for the various Content.ie5 folders (there can be a lot of them) and manually delete everything in them.

Hidden usage of disk space can often be a result of hard links. SysInternals Disk Usage (du.exe) can get a more accurate count of disk usage without counting hard links, but even it can't get everything.
 
Last edited:
My issue with Win7 is that over time the WinSxS folder grows to some outrageous size over time, and there's really nothing you can do about it.
 
You can probably drop the page file size down to 2 GB. You'd probably never even use that much.
 
evilsofa said:
Run CCleaner, then run Windows Cleanup (check the box for Windows Update Cleanup, that is a relatively new thing). You can also manually delete everything in the Windows/SoftwareDisbribution/Download folder. Leave the WinSxS folder alone, you can't clean that manually without breaking your Windows install.

I've also seen old Content.ie5 folders (the temporary files location for Internet Explorer) seemingly be overlooked by any of these methods for reasons unknown to me, particularly on very old Windows installs; I've been known to turn off hidden system folders and files, run searches for the various Content.ie5 folders (there can be a lot of them) and manually delete everything in them.

Hidden usage of disk space can often be a result of hard links. SysInternals Disk Usage (du.exe) can get a more accurate count of disk usage without counting hard links, but even it can't get everything.
Click to expand...

I'm rolling on the floor laughing over here right now.

A simple CCCleaner took me from 27.7GB to 35.9GB.

If there isn't already a sticky on how to free up disk space with ease, write one! ;)

Thanks, and best regards,
-I3
 
I3eyond said:
I'm rolling on the floor laughing over here right now.

A simple CCCleaner took me from 27.7GB to 35.9GB.

If there isn't already a sticky on how to free up disk space with ease, write one! ;)

Thanks, and best regards,
-I3
Click to expand...


What did CCleaner remove to free up the space?
 
PornoSatan said:
What did CCleaner remove to free up the space?
Click to expand...

Keeping in mind I have had this system up and running since 2011 and really done absolutely 0 optimization or clean-up (for what reason, I now don't know why!):

The bulk was from:

IE - Temporary Internet Files (not that I even use IE...)
System - Temporary Files
System - Windows Log Files
Utilities - NVIDIA Install Files

A lot of other, much smaller things, but, the above is the bulk of what was removed.
 
You should still go into Disk Cleanup and see how much "Compress Old Files" would clear up as well!
 
Will do.

Random question not exactly related to this thread:

Do SSD's slow down like a traditional platter based drive when they are low on storage capacity? If so, what's the typical threshold to maintain available on an SSD for optimal performance?\

Edit: Disk Cleanup will free 1.8MB, lol.
 
When you use windirstat, you need to run it as administrator, or there will be folders it will skip over (and even as admin, there will be folders it will miss, but less of them).
 
jwcalla said:
My issue with Win7 is that over time the WinSxS folder grows to some outrageous size over time, and there's really nothing you can do about it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm surprised his Windows folder is so small, mine is 44GB !
 
I3eyond said:
Will do.

Random question not exactly related to this thread:

Do SSD's slow down like a traditional platter based drive when they are low on storage capacity? If so, what's the typical threshold to maintain available on an SSD for optimal performance?\

Edit: Disk Cleanup will free 1.8MB, lol.
Click to expand...

Hard drives don't slow down because they're full, they slow down because they're fragmented. Of course, defragmenting a full drive is pretty much impossible.

On a SSD, fragmentation is not a problem, however if you have limited free space, you can have problems with write amplification, reducing the life of the SSD, and causing slow downs when writing (no effect on reading). That's why some people use under provisioning, or just are careful with free space. I'm a storage hog so I prefer to under provision (a practice I started before large SSDs and before trim), easier now that I've got a 1TB SSD.
 
Aesma said:
Hard drives don't slow down because they're full, they slow down because they're fragmented. Of course, defragmenting a full drive is pretty much impossible.

On a SSD, fragmentation is not a problem, however if you have limited free space, you can have problems with write amplification, reducing the life of the SSD, and causing slow downs when writing (no effect on reading). That's why some people use under provisioning, or just are careful with free space. I'm a storage hog so I prefer to under provision (a practice I started before large SSDs and before trim), easier now that I've got a 1TB SSD.
Click to expand...

It's called over provisioning, not under!

To the OP, when you see an SSD that is 250GB instead of 256GB, or 480GB instead of 512GB, or 960GB instead of 1TB, that means the drive has already been over provisioned by the maker for the reasons mentioned above. Your 120GB drive has 8GB of over provisioning built in. You can choose to over provision even more by leaving free unpartitioned space on the SSD but that should not be necessary.
 
I3eyond said:
My intention is not to get a new hard drive to have to re-install the entire game, go through rebinding every key, redoing every add-on, etc.
Click to expand...

You can image your current drive to a bigger one and not have to reinstall anything. Just saying as an option.
 
Microsoft put out a patch that allows you to clean up unnecessary hotfix files. You can find disk cleanup under accessories | System Tools. The first time you run it i believe there is a system button or something similar towards the bottom left of the application you can click on and have it scan for what files can be removed. It can also remove unneeded service pack files. Might be able to free up another several GB of space from that.
 
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