this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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Lately, my Windows 10 hard drive is being used up for no reason whatsoever - I'm pretty sure it was Windows Update that's causing it. What should I do? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/techsupport@lemmy.world
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SPECS:

OS: Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 64-Bit and Linux (dual-booting on separate hard drives)

CPU: Intel Core i7 9700K

RAM: 32GB

Motherboard: MSI Z3-90-A PRO (MS-7B98)

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770

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[–] L3s@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)
  • You mentioned hard drive, is it a SSD or HDD?
  • How big of a drive?
  • When you say its getting used up, do you mean its running out of space or the performance is at 100%?

For space: Check what your largest files are, then see if its safe to remove them. Tools like TreeSize are great for this specific usecase.

For performance: Narrow down exactly whats causing it to hit 100% usage. To do that, open task manager, then click the hard drive column. Sort it so they most utilize process is at the top, and that will be whats causing it to max.

Another thing you could try is running these two commands in an elevated powershell/cmd window (right click start, select "run cmd as admin"):

  • SFC /ScanNow
  • DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
[–] DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)
  1. It's an HDD
  2. It's at least 1 TB (or 931GB)
  3. Performance is still okay - I'm talking about the space

EDIT: Thank you for correcting, L3s!

[–] L3s@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's 931GB, so about 1TB.

I would do TreeSize then, make sure to run it as admin (there's an option once you open it in the top left). Have that scan all your folders on that drive, then expand the biggest folders to see what's eating all that space up. If you lookup any files that you aren't sure if they're important, usually you'll find some discussions about whether that file is critical or not (for example, if they're in c:\windows\system32). Comb through each large folder and see what you can clean-up, and that'll give you some space back hopefully, or at least show you what you're storing that's eating it all up.

[–] DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

Just don't delete all of System32?

[–] BCOVertigo@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Grab a program that lets you easily check what parts of the file tree have the most volume. If it's not apparent what you should clean up from the results, please provide some of the bloated folders so others can provide opinions.

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 4 points 1 week ago

In case you don't need Windows updates, maybe use Windows Update Blocker? It's a registry editor to block the update services even in editions that don't fully support disabling the services.

[–] LNRDrone@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Windows is stupid AF when it comes to multiple drives and it tends to create swap on all of them.

I think Advanced settings -> performance should get you on the tab with swap settings.

[–] DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have WIndows 10 - where is that on the settings?

[–] LNRDrone@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago

Control panel -> View advanced system system settings -> Performance -> Settings -> Advanced -> Virtual memory -> Change

Make sure the "Automatically manage..." is nit selected and you should be able to set the paging file for each drive separately. System managed for the main OS drive (usually C:) and any other SSDs you run apps from is fine. Old hardrives and other drives that are just for storage should have "None", otherwise that drive may be used for paging file. Also make sure the main drive always has a good bit of free space (20GB+ should be more than enough), so it should be prioritized for the paging file.

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

could try: start -> disk cleanup -> hit the 'clean up system files' button bottom left

[–] DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Other than that

[–] CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] dgriffith@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yeah, I had a surface laptop that had 60GB in there. Real handy when it's only got 128GB of storage.

I used PatchCleaner and it did the job.

[–] Fecundpossum@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Install Linux.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What have you done so far

[–] DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

Whenever I reboot Windows 10, the hard drive I use for that jumps back to 40 GB capacity.