Missing SSD space

Hello, i have a 480gb SSD for my steam games and i apear to be missing some space on it atm, just hoping someone can tell me how to get it back without wiping it, i've got nowhere to keep the files on it so i would have to buy another drive to wipe it.

Basically the drive shows 1 partition in disk manager of 450gb, if i go into the drive and select everything in there i only get 290gb in total and its showing 290gb used and 65gb free space, something doesnt add up. My boot drive has a 118gb partition and im using 100gb with 15gb free which is much more like it.

I've had a quick google and tried all the suggestions i could find, i checked theres no backup shadow copies, system protection or restore points and ive emptied the recycle bin.

Im guessing theres some hidden files or something, but i cant find any. The drives showing and healthy and theres no errors.

Could anyone help me get my space back plz, cheers.

go to folder options and make hidden files visible, you might have a hibernate and swap file grabbing some space.

Yeah i have hidden files showing, the only file i found that was hidden and taking up some space was my page file but i knew about that one and its included in the used space.

How would i see if hibernate or swap file is taking space? I have always had hibernate disabled so im guessing it wont be but ya never know.

edit. nvm i just googled it, there should be .sys files there if they were been used i guess, there aint any there unfortunately.

looks like im gonna have to just format it, ill just buy a cheap HDD to back it up for now.

Try and use tree size, free software which should list everything on the ssd

good idea, forgot about that, i've even got it installed already lol.

Good shout ED, there was 2 recycle bins, one showing in explorer and one not showing, the one that wasnt showing was 75gb lol. I was just about to order a backup HDD so i could format this, but ya msged just in time

Taking page file off also helps a bit Nice that it's sorted though. I lost 70GB the other day to find it was shadowplay temp files not being temporary at all.

to most people 70gb probably isnt a lot but i only use a 120gb for OS and a 480 for storage so its quite a lot for me i stopped using mechanical drives about 5 or 6 years ago cause they used to annoy me ticking away when i was watching films.

BluD said:

Good shout ED, there was 2 recycle bins, one showing in explorer and one not showing, the one that wasnt showing was 75gb lol. I was just about to order a backup HDD so i could format this, but ya msged just in time

Click to expand...

What was in the second recycle bin?
Did you run a trim cycle on the SSD to regain space that had previously been deleted, was this the second recycle bins contents?

I didnt check to be honest, i just deleted it inside treesize. I assume it was just full of stuff i deleted before i turned delete immediately on last time i reinstalled windows. No idea why windows decided to make it invisible and create a new recycle bin.

harry5522 said:

Taking page file off also helps a bit Nice that it's sorted though. I lost 70GB the other day to find it was shadowplay temp files not being temporary at all.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't recommend turning the pagefile off entirely or taking it off your fastest drive - I usually recommend setting it custom to 1GB (1024MB) initial size and then max size depends on what you do but 8192MB should cover most people - if you have like tons of RAM and spend all day crunching massive data stuff then you might want to push it up a bit more heh just incase. This way you get maximum compatibility while keeping the amount of additional writes to the SSD in check.

Yeah i set it to what a speed a guide said and i ran out of memory about 10 times within about 10 mins so i gave in and turned it back on system managed, it likes to use about 13gb.