Also in the very unlikely case that your file system is corrupt there may be a non-zero sized “” item.
There also have been reports that some third-party software stores data there, but I cannot confirm this. In this case, the utility is telling me that I have 45GB worth of DLL files installed on my system, as well as 21GB of DAT files. The section in the upper-right corner of the interface breaks down your storage usage by data type. What I find particularly powerful and efficient is the visual representation that it provides, allowing you to quickly see large files based on their size. So, by using WinDirStat, I immediately found an application that is consuming a significant amount of disk space. I personally turned this feature of since I have a different backup strategy - however, this may not apply to everyone, so you’ll have to live with the “” item :mrgreen. I found WinDirStat several years ago while looking for an application that would help me identify the largest files on my hard drive and enable me to clean up files that I no longer needed.
WDS deduces 'Unknown' by subtracting size of known files plus stated free space, from total capacity. and you may see a massive number of small.
The contents are a dump of the registry at the time the SRP was taken and of relevant files (usually from the system folders). If you run Windows Directory Statistics (WDS) 'As Admin' (rt-click the icon to access that), it can show you files otherwise hidden by NTFS permissions, etc. The biggest portion is usually being taken up by the System Restore Points (SRPs) you can create (or that are automatically created by software installers).
Now what is stored in this directory? If you could gain SYSTEM access (and I will not tell you how that is possible …), you would see that the system keeps some binary log files there, but these take up only a small portion of what is stored in there. And by the way, we have had reports of up to 30 GB of “” space. WDS cannot access the files under System Volume Information on all the (NTFS?) drives, so it cannot sum up the sizes of these items. Please note the part WDS can access! This is the important point here. This mysterious item is just the difference between what Windows reports as the free space on the volume minus size of the files WDS can access. Sometimes it’s an huge amount of space… like 700 or more MB … i think it could be the “system volume information” but… what mysterous things are within this space? he he he…" "i think it would be nice to put in the faq or in help or in some docs what’s in the “unknown” space For day-to-day file deletion, follow our instructions for permanently deleting files, as emptying the Recycle Bin still leaves traces of the deleted files on your hard drive.WDS shows a certain item labelled “” and recently someone posted a comment asking for details:
Doing a bit of research online, the most common suggestion was (a) Recycle Bin and (b) System Volume Information. This is the result: As you can see, there is about 244.7GB unknown usage.
Perform this scan in WinDirStat about once a month to clean up any files you no longer need access to. It was recommended that I try WinDirStat, as it could help identify how much space each file was taking up. I cleared these logs and disabled logging, the disk had plenty of free space at this point. What is this Is it possible that it's old data after I reformatted Or is. It turns out that there is 63.9 GB of 'Unknown' data (F7 to show). There were massive log files associated with the default web site. I ran WinDirStat to see where my HDD space was going. The other day the system disk filled up due to IIS log files.
Once you've identified the culprit, right-click the file and choose "Delete (to Recycle Bin)" for later disposal, or "Delete (no way to undelete)" for permanent, irreversible deletion. Server 2012 R2 System Disk Full (Unknown File) Bookmark this question. The unknown does not show up in the upper right pane. Upper left pane now has 3 new labels - Unknown, files and free space. If you click on a folder or file, the corresponding color block will be highlighted below.Īlternatively, click the large blocks of color to find out which files are taking the most space. Now to WinDirStat - same results but now if I tick all the boxes under options a huge yellow box appears (labelled Unknown) in the lower pane. It may be a coincidence but that is also the size of my Hiberfil. I find a section marked 'Unknown' which is 12GB. Run WinDirStat to see the sizes of all files on the C: drive. The top half lists files and folders sorted by file size. Make small change by making a copy of a tiny file Close Try & Decide and choose to save the changes with a reboot Check properties of C: drive again. When the scan is complete, you'll be presented with the summary screen. Click "OK," and give the program 5 to 10 minutes to scan your hard disk. Launch WinDirStat and select the drive you want to evaluate.