Windows drive full for no reason

Ok, so I have had to move yet again and have finally gotten my setup running again. Since the move I have hardly used the Windows side of my machine, however, the Windows drive which contains just the OS is full. I do not have any other programs running on this drive, everything runs on separate SSD's or HDD''s, so I don't know why the hard drive has filled up expectantly. After googling around for a bit this problem seems to be a common thread with windows 10. I would like to know if anyone else has had this same problem, what did you do to fix - without doing a fresh install - and how do I keep it from happing again, other than running linux across the machine.

I have erased all programs, any evidence any hidden files, anything that I thought might be the problem, the drive is completely empty as far as I know yet windows says it is still full.

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You could try using the format tool.
Or you can try recreating the partition as a whole. If you type "Partition" into Windows Start usually the Disk Management window will come up. You can right click the partition that is supposedly "full" and delete it. Then just create a new Simple Volume on the drive.
If that doesn't work as well, perhaps try and use format but diselect "Quick Format", it takes singificantly longer but hardwipes the drive.

I don't think I can do that because I would format the operating system. Thats the problem, there isn't anything but the operating system on that drive with no extra partitions on it.

run something like space sniffer as admin and wait for it to scan the whole drive

http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/

should show anything that might be hidden

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Probably that stupid hibernation file or whatever that is called.

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there's also this. it lead me to figure out i had over 400,000 screenshots of a game i had been playing for two years. apparently i had the screenshot key set to mouse 2.

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Windirstat for the win!

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pretty much this

open an administrator command prompt and run:

c:
cd\
dir /a

You'll see that you probably have all your space taken up by hibernation and swap file.
Swap can be moved. Hibernation cannot (Thanks Obama)
Run this command to disable hibernation - something most desktop users don't use

powercfg /hibernate off

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Would try ccleaner chances are your temp folder is stuffed (for reasons I have no idea). But definitely use winderstat to find where its stemming from.

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Thanks man. I ran this right before I formatted the drive and did a fresh install and the hibernation file had 230+ gb of data in it. I have no idea what it is storing, as far as that goes I didn't even know the file existed. If you don't mind me asking, do you know what information is stored in that file and why is it saving so much data?

Once again, thanks.

Wow. That's pretty big. Hibernation file is usually about the size of physical RAM you have.
Do you have 256GB of RAM?

No, I have 64gb of ram. I was surprised with how much was stored in that one file, and whats really surprising is that hard drive filled up over a weeks time. I don't use windows that often on that machine, its mainly used for adobe, content creating, work load for school / work, so I don't know why it did what it did. If it matters at all. I am using a Samsung 950 pro M.2 for that windows drive and everything else, adobe, Rosetta stone and all other programs were on separate SSD's with one HDD for mass storage.

I have since backed up everything to another machine and have completely wiped Windows and formatted all of the drives. If I had know that it was so unusual for that file to fill up like that I would have taken a screen shot to show you. Anyway, thanks once again for the help.

Were the offending files:
Pagefile.sys
or
hiberfil.sys

anything else is probably the fault of something else.

search for treesize free. Scan your hd and bobs your uncle.
https://www.jam-software.de/customers/downloadTrial.php?article_no=80&language=EN

They were. the hiberfil.sys was the file that consumed most of the data storage. The pagefile.sys had something like 3gb worth of stuff in it, as far as I remember but it may have been 8gb. I just remember being shocked with how much was in the hiberfil.sys file. I was surprised to find that it alone had used up almost the whole drive.

If you don't mind me asking what information does that file store, and what is it using it for.

Pretty much just saves the current state of the computer when you hibernate, as when hibernating, unlike sleep, it cuts power to everything including the RAM. When you come back online it dumps everything that was saved to the file back into RAM and resumes where you left off

Thank you.

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whoa, i was going to suggest defragmentation and maybe running the windows' native create and format hard disk partition. that's sweet i didn't know hibernation files could be so, troublesome.

If you dont use the hibernation future you can turn it off and it removes the same amount of space on the drive that you have RAM
in CMD Admin: powercfg,exe /hibernate off