Free Disk Space on Start Up Fluctuating by 10Gb for no apparent reason

[HughP]

Hi There,

I am running Windows 7 Professional SP1.

I have an i7 2600k processor 16 GB ram and 111GB solid state drive.

Recently when I had a lot (and I mean hundreds) of tabs open in chrome I got a low disk space warning, I had a look and was horrified to find I only had 2.5gb left (I thought I had about 14GB).

So I restarted and it was back to 14GB problem solved or so I thought!!

However I started to monitor the free disk space on start up and it seems to jump between 14GB and 2.5GB? That is 10.5GB difference even though I haven't started anything manually and the start up sequence hasn't changed?

How can I isolate what is causing this problem?

To be clear this is an intermittent problem, sometimes I have 2.5GB on start up sometimes 14GB.

Thanks

 

[clifford_cooley]

You may need to think about increasing the size of your SSD, if you can't uninstall anything.

You could run CCleaner to potentially free some space.

There are a few more locations that can be reduced in size, such as old drivers in "c:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\" folder. Each time you install a new graphics driver, a copy is stored. This can take allot of space (if you keep your drivers current) because the drivers can eat up 300MB per version. Sadly though you must take ownership of these files before you can remove them. That means you must use a registry hack to gain the right to remove them.

It has been a few months since I cleaned out the old graphics drivers in my "Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository" and now I have 2 nVidia driver versions taking up 720MB of space. And this is just Windows, GeForce Experience has its own driver store location in "c:\Users\All Users\NVIDIA Corporation\NetService\". This mean that not only are old drivers stored, but they are stored in two different locations. Ultimately taking up 1.4GB with only 2 driver versions.

On a side note:
I wouldn't clean the whole driver store folder, just the old graphics drivers. There is no telling what side issues you would create by removing everything. I certainly don't know and don't want to risk it.

 

[HughP]

Thanks for the advice.

But what confuses me is that the free space is jumping around for no apparent reason?

When I started up the first time this morning is said 2.5GB free space, I simply restarted and it now says 14GB remaining?

1.) Is a jump as large as 10.5GB normal when I haven't installed anything, all I have done is browse?

2.) Why would it jump down to 2.5GB than back to 14GB repeatedly?

I don't want to start deleting anything till I know what the problem is?

 

[clifford_cooley]

Many temp locations (Backups, Restore Points, Internet Cache, and etc...) have a limit on the size. It could be the system cleaning out older files if the storage limit has been reached. But to be honest with you, I don't know what is happening.

All I can tell you is my system size is less than 30GB (I have my data elsewhere), and I don't think I have this problem.