Empty space takes up room

kittensinurface

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In File Explorer and Disk Management, a 600GB ExFAT partition reports that it is full, very little space left. Even if I enable hidden files, then select all folders & files in that partition, it also reports 400GB of items. I have empted the trash.
In Aomei Partition Assistant, it also reports 600GB no space.
How does 400GB of items equal 600GB of used space? What is the other 200GB of used space?
 

The Shadow 2023

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First, Hi and welcome!
Next, you emptied WHAT trash. Did you empty all your browsers (?) 'Temporary Internet Files'? They can total Gigabytes if never removed.
How about "Prefetch". That one too, can grow into a Monster.
And what about Tracking Cookies ? Ever hear of those? I've removed over 140,000 of those from just one person's PC.
The only program that I know (and use) that will remove those is "Super Anti Spyware". No need to buy it, the FREE version works just fine to remove both Trojans and Tracking Cookies.

A very simple exercise, that anyone can do, that will delete every .tmp file on your HD.
Open a CMD (Command) prompt, and at the prompt, type in del /f /s /q C:\*.tmp and press enter.
You will see a line by line display of .tmp files being deleted, one file per line. When the command prompt comes back, you can close that window (X).
Just replace .tmp in that command, to .bak to remove all the backup files.

As was posted by another member, your browsers can be programmed to delete temp files on Exit. Try that.

Are you maybe thinking that 400GB (number of items), should equal 400GB of space? Not so! Even an empty folder can take up a minimum of 1K of disk space. Sorry to tell you, but you're on the wrong track.

I'll bet that I could do a cleanup on your PC and remove over 500,000 junk files. It's what I've done for a living for the past 20+ years.
Good Luck!
Shadow :cool:
 
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