24GB Of Data On My SSD I Can't Find.

So I was looking to get rid of a few things on my C drive due to space issues and there's about 24GBs of data that I'm unable to locate. After checking the C drive it's showing that there is 64.5GB of used space. If I open the C drive, show all hidden folders and check the properties of all folders within it comes out to about 40GBs of data. So, my question is, where did the other 24.5GB go?

Maybe an unpartitioned space?

Look into a partition program to see what's going on.

what brand ssd? most drives are over provisioned to give some free space to help the drive run properly...

What is OP?

An SSD controller is responsible for the massive task of managing all data traffic and storage for the drive. NAND technology’s intrinsic complexities require a lot of extra work behind the scenes. A data write is not as simple as placing data into an empty memory bank. Each NAND cell has a limited lifespan – it can only endure a specific number of data reads/writes. An additional layer of complexity is added by the fact that overwriting old data on NAND requires an erase of the entire NAND block (this same block may contain other data that is still valid). As a result, the controller is constantly moving data around to ensure that the cells wear evenly and to preemptively prepare “free blocks” to use for future data writes.
All of this management work requires the SSD to have a kind of “swap space” available to use as temporary storage while the controller goes about its business. The controller will use any available free space for this, but free space becomes a premium commodity as we fill our drives with data. OP is a way to set aside a minimum amount of free space, inaccessible to the user or the OS, which the SSD controller can utilize as a kind of “work bench.”


it might be overprovisioned. i know with some you can op and if you reinstall windows before undoing the op it'll lose that space cause windows wont kow it's there.

also minimum over provisioning is usually 10% so on a 256gb ssd that would match up pretty evenly.

Well it's in Intel 128GB SSD. It shows a max of 111GB

temp files
swap file
shadow copies?
windows system restore?

It could be your hybernate file. It should be about the same size as your installed RAM. You can disable this by typing powercfg -h off in the cmd screen.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/819-hibernate-enable-disable.html

You can download a memory analyzer, but I've found its often an anti virus program. They typically quarantine a space and remove it from the storage pool while being hidden. You can also change the properties of the parent directory, c drive in this case, to show all hidden files and all child directories should inherit that setting. That will allow you to view everything that is identified in that directory.

Also, use the disk management utility to make sure that you actually have the entire physical disk partitioned as the c drive and the related windows partitions. It will show you clearly if you have unallocated space on the disk.

try this see if you deleted it by mistake.

https://www.piriform.com/recuva/download/standard

That's one of the reasons why EFI/UEFI suck. (the boot system PCs use now in place of old BIOS/MBR system)

Windows and Mac OS do hide lots of stuff on these partitions and you can't do jack about it.

In addition, it could also be your "pagefile.sys". If you have 16GB of ram, Windows will reserver a pagefile of 1.5x that (24GB) as a file called pagefile.sys. It is meant to be used as additional RAM if you use all 16GB....but realistically, you can lower it to like 8GB as long you don't actually consistenly use all of your RAM. (I don't).

The missing space isn't the UEFI. UEFI BIOS is still BIOS, the hard drive is still GPT or MBR, even if it stores the UEFI on the hard drive, it's a very lightweight system. On top of that, having a bridge between the BIOS and OS gives OS based malware protection the ability to detect and quarantine even rootkits.

It's not like it's extra space, either, it's just part of the space that it used to use for the OS partition is now off limits for obvious reasons (GPT/MBR can't be corrupted by other failures or malicious software). They also separate the OS partition from the Data partition and the Recovery partitions. They even go as far as to segregate "owner" accounts from the system admin account specifically to limit access to the root to any malware the person might unintentionally install.

You might lose visibility for a small portion of your drive under the new systems, but they are functionally much better than the older ones.

I have my paging file down to 4GB with 32GB of RAM, which I believe is the minimum for a 64 bit OS, or at least it is for 8.1 Pro. My OS is on a 128GB SSD with around 40GB free and everything else is on one of my high speed HDD's. I never have trouble with that setup, even with multiple VM's and games running.

I believe the paging file has a maximum size as well, it doesn't simply match your RAM.

Unless you're getting page errors, I wouldn't sweat it, but you can always grab a memory analyzer tool and see what is taking up space.

Almost every program puts some stuff on the OS partition even if it's located on a data partition. I've heard that about itunes and steam is known for that as well.

I occasionally install games on the OS partition to take advantage of the faster read speed.

Primary hard drive is best done with OS and installed programs. Secondary should be data and media. Otherwise you'll always run into these problems.

Large SSD's were still pretty pricey when that system went into place, sadly. I'd love to add a larger one, but I would want to do a PCI-e blade, and I just don't have the space at this point.

Side note for anyone thinking about SLI, taking up 4 PCI slots of space with graphics cards you'll probably never fully utilize is a waste!

Please, stop.

On another note: I should probably reduce my pagefile when I rebuild my main desktop. I neglected to recall the default page file size was based on your ram size...