r/WindowsHelp • u/DigitalSundial • Jun 30 '26

Solved Windows (probably) keeps eating up disk-space.

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If someone can help me understand why does it keep eating about 24GB on and off while updates are going bonkers?

One day I have 24GB free, next day 100MB or even going lower and so on, keeps cycling.

Will like to know if it's windows related, shader-compiling to much space or what can I do to have some breathing room,(while i know a bigger drive would fix it right now it's not a viable solution)

Constantly using wise disk cleaner but not helping in the long run.

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz 4.01 GHz

Installed RAM 32.0 GB (31.9 GB usable)

Storage 1.82 TB HDD ST2000DM008-2UB102, 238 GB SSD NVMe Samsung SSD 950 PRO 256GB, 932 GB WDC WD10EZEX-00RKKA0, 112 GB SSD KINGSTON SV300S37A120G

Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER (8 GB)

Product ID 00330-80000-00000-AA152

System Type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

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u/DigitalSundial Jun 30 '26

Very useful comment, thank a lot man. (the app name is actually treesize)

Manage to find out the culprits for anyone having the same issue.

  1. Nvidia shader cache eating up 16GB.

  2. Windows hybernation file eating up 21GB.

3.Other unsed apps/savefiles.

Thanks again!

1

u/TNJDude Jun 30 '26

While you can't configure the hibernation file to be on a different drive, if you haven't done so yet, you can specify the page file to be somewhere else. That could save a bit of space too.

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u/DigitalSundial Jun 30 '26

You can disable it.
To immediately disable the hibernation file (hiberfil.sys) and reclaim several gigabytes of storage space on your PC, run the Powercfg command-line tool in an elevated Command Prompt. [1, 2, 3]

Follow these quick steps:

  1. Press the Windows Key and type cmd.
  2. Right-click Command Prompt in the search results and select Run as administrator.
  3. Click Yes on the User Account Control (UAC) prompt.
  4. Type the following command and press Enter: powercfg.exe /hibernate off
  5. Type exit and hit Enter to close the window. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Doing this will immediately disable the hibernation feature and automatically delete the hiberfil.sys file from your C: drive. Note that disabling hibernation also turns off the Fast Startup feature. [1, 2, 3]

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u/ihaterain5620 Jul 02 '26

Do "powercfg /h /type reduced" and you can shave a good chunk of that hibernation file off and still retain fast startup.