Where’s My Disk Space Going?

How to find out.

(Why “memory disk space”? I’ll address that below.)

No matter how much we have, disks never seem to be large enough. As we collect pictures, videos, and programs (and the programs themselves collect data), more and more disk space is consumed. With so much happening on our computers these days, it’s difficult to understand what’s taking up the most space.

Fortunately, I can recommend a free tool that can give us some very helpful data.

Losing Disk Space

Disk space can disappear fast, even if you think you’re saving files elsewhere. A free tool called TreeSize shows you exactly what’s taking up space on your drive. With that information, you can decide what to delete, back up, or move to keep your computer running smoothly.

TreeSize Free

TreeSize Free is a free tool that shows you what’s taking up all of the space on your machine. (A paid version is available with additional features, but for what we’re doing, the free version will suffice.)

Download TreeSize Free from the JAM Software page and install it.1

Upon completion, run it. You’ll be asked if you want to restart the program as administrator.

I recommend choosing “Always start as administrator”. This allows TreeSize access to everything and will generate more accurate space usage reports.

As TreeSize scans your hard drive, it updates its display in real time. Once the circular progress bar disappears, the results are complete.

A typical machine

This is the result of running TreeSize on C:\ of a basic Windows 10 installation.

The primary information here is a list of all of the top-level folders on the C: drive and the amount of disk space they consume. It’s sorted by decreasing disk space, so the biggest space consumers are at the top.

Unsurprisingly, it shows that the Windows folder and everything it contains uses the most space.

Digging deeper

You can see the contents of the next level of folders by clicking the greater-than sign (“>”) to the left of the folder name. Here’s the Windows folder expanded.

You can see right away that the “WinSxS” folder contains the most data of all the subfolders within C:\Windows. (This is normal, by the way.) You can also see the relative size of the other folders within Windows. If you want to drill down deeper, keep expanding subfolders.

TreeSize on user files

It’s useful to see what’s stored in your user account folders. In Windows, that means looking at the contents of “C:\Users\%USERNAME%.” In my case, that’s C:\Users\leon.

You can see that AppData and its contents take up the most space in my account.

Your machine

Now, as to what’s eating up the disk space on your machine, there’s no way for me to know. However, using a tool like TreeSize, you should be able to see what’s taking up all that space and take appropriate action.

Related

What’s the Difference Between Memory and Disk Space?

Let me clear up a common mix-up between RAM, hard drives, SSDs, and flash drives, what each does, how they differ, and why knowing matters when buying or troubleshooting your computer.
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Aside: Disk space is not memory

People confuse these terms a lot, and it’s very important — particularly when asking for help — that the terms you use accurately reflect what you’re talking about. To oversimplify a little:

• Memory is RAM (Random Access Memory), where your programs and data reside when they are in use. When you turn your computer off, RAM is erased. To free up memory, run fewer programs at the same time.
• Disk space is about your hard drive, where data is stored permanently (or until you or a program explicitly erases it). To free up disk space, delete files.

Another good difference to note is size. My laptop, for example, has 16 gigabytes of memory, but a terabyte (1024 gigabytes) of disk space. Disk space on a machine is much greater than its RAM.