"Hard Drive Continuously Losing Disk Space"

Regular visitors to our website might still recall a popular post titled "hard drive shows wrong capacity", which helped many users recover the full capacity of their HDD, USB flash drive, or SD card. As explained in the article, there are primarily three reasons for a hard drive showing less capacity than its actual size: a large hidden recovery partition, computer viruses, and invisible unallocated space outside the disk partition. However, hard drive space issues remain prevalent and are of great concern to users. Today, we will address another similar issue: a computer hard drive constantly losing space. Here's a user scenario.

Please provide the list of languages you need translated into American English.

Losing Space on My C: Drive

"I'm constantly running out of space on my C: drive. It's a Windows 10 system with approximately 50 GB, and the available space decreases rapidly even without installing new programs or saving additional files. This morning, it showed 12.6 GB free, then 8.3 GB, 6.1 GB... and now it's almost full, with only 1.2 GB remaining! Why does my hard drive keep losing disk space for no apparent reason?"

See? It doesn't make sense if the unused space of your hard drive partition gets lost at the speed of several gigabytes per day. You must take the time to figure out the actual reasons and apply the right solutions.

?Read More: How to Find Large Files on Windows 10

Next, we'll find the reasons and solutions to fix the hard drive losing space issue. If you find it helpful, please share it with others who might need it.

Reasons & Solutions for Hard Drive Space Disappearing Quickly

The sudden loss of hard drive free space on certain days can be likened to an accident, and we can identify the causes in much simpler ways. However, ensure that you carefully follow the provided solutions, as they have the potential to cause harm to your drive itself.

One. Virus and Malware Infection

Have you installed any suspicious programs from unknown websites or opened any unknown attachment files in emails over the past few days? If so, take note. It's highly likely that a virus is consuming your hard drive space!

Step 1. You can run the antivirus software on your computer to scan and remove the virus as a first attempt.
Step 2. If the antivirus software doesn't work, try to use CMD to remove the virus from the hard drive.
Step 3. What's the last but most powerful method to remove a virus? Fully format the hard drive or perform a system restore.

Two. System Protection

Let's verify if System Restore is enabled, for instance, in Windows 10. Navigate to "Control Panel" -> "System and Security" -> "System" -> "System Protection". Click on "System Protection" to open "System Properties," where you can view the "Protection Settings."

Typically, the Protection is set to 'On' for the System drive. This is why your hard drive loses free space increasingly over time. The feature creates and stores your computer's system files and settings regularly, keeping them in restore points, which are large files.

If this is the issue you're concerned about, you can either opt to disable the System Protection feature by setting it to 'Off' directly, or proceed with the other two steps.

Download CleanGenius on your computer. This tool is also popular as a disk cleanup utility. Use it to clean system junk files, clear large files, and optimize your disk – all three options are designed to efficiently address the 'hard drive losing space' issue.

Step 1. Download and install the Partition Master Suite.

Step 2. Click on "PC Cleaner" and install the CleanGinus tool. Next, click "Cleanup" and then "Scan" to begin cleaning your system and restore your PC to its optimal condition.

Step 3. The software will scan your entire computer to find idle data files that take up a lot of disk space. You can select useless large files, system junk files, and Windows invalid entries, then click "Clean" to start the system cleanup process.

Step 4. When the scan is complete, click “Done” to finish cleaning system junk files.

Step 2. After freeing up disk space, you might still want to enable this system protection feature since it plays a vital role in future system restore and repair. In that case, it's a good idea to reduce its disk space usage.

• Open the System Protection tab and select Local Disk C: (System) in the same manner under the Protection Settings tab. Click "Configure."
• Enable System Protection and under the Disk Space Usage section, slide the bar to decrease the amount of disk space that System Protection can utilize. As storage fills up, older restore points will be deleted to create space for new ones.
• Click the "Apply" button.

Reduce System Restore disk space usage in System Protection settings

Here, you can also delete all restore points for this drive. It's estimated that this method will help save at least 10 GB of disk space on the target drive. Don't hesitate to give it a try.

Three. Hard Drive Malfunctions

How long has this hard drive been in use? Was it a cheap, used one? It might be due to a hardware issue with the hard drive itself. When hard drive errors and bad sectors occur, data may not be stored accurately as most sectors become unusable. Consequently, the available free space would decrease rapidly without any prior notice.

Step 1. Open tools Partition Master on your computer. Then, locate the disk, right-click the partition you want to check, and choose "Advanced" > "Check File System".

Step 2. In the Check File System window, select the "Try to fix errors if found" option and click "Start".

Check the pop-up instructions:

Step 3. The software will begin checking your partition file system on your disk. When it completes, click "Finish".

If it detects too many bad sectors instead of 0 errors, it's time to follow this guide to fix bad sectors.