Hard drive space hoarding

[edgemon007]

HI. I recently upgraded to windows 11. Now I find it likes to hoard my disk space. If use a TF card to store some pictures etc., and use 30GB of a 256GB card, windows tells me I have 30GB of files...but when I do a properties check is says I have used 162 GB of 249! Apparently there are some hidden files windows wants to store on my TF card. So I'm asking for help.. 1) how do I reclaim this space since I own it and not Microsoft, and 2) how do I prevent windows 11 from doing it in the future. Any help here would be great. (I thought one of my TF was junk and bought a new one only to find the same thing happen.. ARGGGGGHHHH!)

 

[Ian]

In Windows Explorer, can you please go to Options > View > Show Hidden Files and Folders, then browse the SD card to see if there is anything hidden stored on there. I'm puzzled as to what this problem could be.

When you right click the stored files/folders and go to properties, does it show 30GB as the "size" AND "size on disk"?:



WinDirStat (https://windirstat.net/) is pretty good for an overview of where storage space is used up.