You’ll probably notice something odd about the amount of free space
your hard drive contains, if you look closely. If you right-click your
C: drive in Windows, you’ll see a certain amount of space referred to as
“Used Space” – in the screenshot below, the hard disk contains 279 GB
of files.
However, if you select all the files on your C: drive (including hidden files and Windows system files), right-click them, and select Properties, you’ll notice something odd. The amount of space used by files doesn’t match up with the amount of used space on your hard drive. Here, we have 272 GB worth of files on our C: drive – but Windows is using 279 GB of space. That’s a difference of 7 GB or so – where did all those GBs go?
It turns out that certain types of files don’t appear in Windows Explorer. Files in Windows’ aptly named “shadow storage,” also known as “shadow copies,” don’t appear here. The shadow storage contains System Restore points and previous versions of files for the Previous Versions feature in Windows Explorer.
To view the exact amount of storage used by shadow files on every hard drive attached to your system, you can run the command below. You’ll need to run it as Administrator – to open a Command Prompt window as Administrator, search for Command Prompt in the Start menu, right-click the Command Prompt shortcut, and select Run as administrator.
Run the following command in the Command Prompt window:
To adjust the amount of hard drive space used by the shadow copy service (System Restore and Previous Versions of files), follow this guide: Make System Restore Use Less Drive Space in Windows 7
To check for partitions, use the Disk Management application included with Windows. Click Start, type partitions, and select the Create and format hard disk partitions shortcut to open it.
The hard drive should report its correct size in the Disk Management window. As we can see in the screenshot below, nearly 11 GB of the hard drive’s space is reserved for a hidden recovery partition. This is fairly typical of laptops and other computers you don’t build yourself.
Each of these factors can take a bite out of your available hard drive space, leaving you with less space than expected for your own use.
However, if you select all the files on your C: drive (including hidden files and Windows system files), right-click them, and select Properties, you’ll notice something odd. The amount of space used by files doesn’t match up with the amount of used space on your hard drive. Here, we have 272 GB worth of files on our C: drive – but Windows is using 279 GB of space. That’s a difference of 7 GB or so – where did all those GBs go?
It turns out that certain types of files don’t appear in Windows Explorer. Files in Windows’ aptly named “shadow storage,” also known as “shadow copies,” don’t appear here. The shadow storage contains System Restore points and previous versions of files for the Previous Versions feature in Windows Explorer.
To view the exact amount of storage used by shadow files on every hard drive attached to your system, you can run the command below. You’ll need to run it as Administrator – to open a Command Prompt window as Administrator, search for Command Prompt in the Start menu, right-click the Command Prompt shortcut, and select Run as administrator.
Run the following command in the Command Prompt window:
vssadmin list shadowstorageAs we can see in the command below, about 9 GB of space is used in our hard drive by the Windows Shadow Copy Storage. The difference above looked more like 7 GB, but that can be explained by rounding.
To adjust the amount of hard drive space used by the shadow copy service (System Restore and Previous Versions of files), follow this guide: Make System Restore Use Less Drive Space in Windows 7
Other Partitions
Laptops and desktop computers often come with several partitions, including a hidden recovery partition. If you’re wondering why a new computer has less free space than its hard drive specifications would lead you to believe, there’s a good chance some of that is taken up by a separate recovery partition.To check for partitions, use the Disk Management application included with Windows. Click Start, type partitions, and select the Create and format hard disk partitions shortcut to open it.
The hard drive should report its correct size in the Disk Management window. As we can see in the screenshot below, nearly 11 GB of the hard drive’s space is reserved for a hidden recovery partition. This is fairly typical of laptops and other computers you don’t build yourself.
Each of these factors can take a bite out of your available hard drive space, leaving you with less space than expected for your own use.
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