WIN 7 crazy bloat

Windows 7 starts to become a serious bloatware, because of the backups.

My main drive now contains 100 GB bloated Windows OS files

and my backup drive over 300 GB bloat.


I was deleting as much as possible but there is no option to delete all the bloat... whoever was inventing it, it is creating headache and a no good thing, there is absolutly no reason creating so much bloat for the 3 newest backups.


Need a way how to get ride of bloat.

Give us a screen shot of winstatdir so we can "see" the bloat.

I already answered this (offered reasons why) when you mentioned it in the other thread...

Restore points... hibernation... etc... I usually limit that to a few GB so it doesn't grow like I am imagining yours is. Also, what size is your pagefile? That can likely be smaller too. Last, are you sure its not programs that are taking up that much space? 100GB is a ton if it isn't hibernation and restores...

The reason you have 300GB on your backup drive is, Im guessing, that you have multiple images of it. So that isn't fair to mention in this context.



Out of the box, I can get a windows (professional) install to well under 20GB. When its fully updated, I don't think it still hits 20GB

Click to expand...

my windows folder is 56GB LOL i think i borked something.


hahahahah ran ccleaner for the first time in a minute... 28GB.... yes 28GB of temp files bahahahha... wowza

Also, delete the downloads folder for IE/Chrome or Firefox. I'm sure you have a ton in there as well.

I deleted all but the newest backup, barely any change in size, still almost 300 GB on backup drive and the main OS drive a 100 GB hog with only 14 GB inside download folder. The OS is the reason...

Windows is telling me that the backup is 25 GB or so but it is way more, way more, way more.... and way more. Invisible to me what is stored, i try to find out.

Hibernate is deactivated... i never use it. Pagefile should equal to the 16 GB, however it doesnt matter, it is still not nearly close to the huge bloat.

All visible files on Drive C are 52 GB added, means, over 50 GB hidden files on drive C.
The hidden files on backup is almost 300 GB still, with a single backup left.

I try figure out how to make it visible, obviously a OS feature because it is bloating somewhere.

The OS is the reason...

Click to expand...

If that was true, we would all have that problem. We dont.

What about system restore...you are saying backup, but how big is the restore size?

Pagefile is typically DOUBLE your installed ram (assuming you had all the ram in when you installed windows).

WINDIRSTAT sir... post it up.

I dont know how to bring up Winstatdir, search gives no results.

As you can see, i can free only 7 GB space on C or so, including system entrys. On other drive i was deleting any entry except the newest one... still close to 300 GB. The entire Download Folder ist 13.1 GB on C, maybe some temporary file bloat from browsers, but it can never be that huge and those folders would be included into the total data size of all folders in drive C, is 52.7 GB, but drive have to tackle a crazy 98 GB, not gonna work without server HDDs if it keeps continuing.

There is NO GAMES installed on drive C... its all handled on a separate SSD and funnily enough, it is the only drive that is behaving properly. All drives that are affected by system drive or backup are freaking out... in data size.

I wish i would never have started with backup, it seems immature or space breaking, at least for me, all others seems fine. I cant get ride of the 300 GB on backup drive for example, the system is locking it away from me and is bloating with invisible entrys.

Edit: I tried to "break open" the folders with admin rights on the backup drive and there is a single shell entry with 233 GB data size... what the heck is going on, this is about 8 times the entire OS size...

I googled WINDIRSTAT and here is your DL link - https://windirstat.info/download.html

From your disjointed screenshot, I see backups and not restore points. Check restore point size...

In that shot of the backups, you have 21.96GB worth and your backups range back to February?!! Just have it keep a couple of images, not several months worth.

How to delete all the restore points?

Drive C is only using 5% of space for restore, in theory. Backup drive no more than 30% but the used space is way higher!!! Apparently the management doesnt work.

I will kill everything, i have had enough of it.

Just not worth the hassle, i make a manual backup of browser stuff and personal files. If the OS goes boom, i got a CD... for reinstall.

Btw: I had in mind windirstat is a native function, i dont really enjoy foreign tools.

Turning off system restore deletes any backups it had.

How to properly turn off? Schedule is turned of but still full of data hog.

I was deleting all backup entrys but still 289 GB data on my backup drive.

Guess at some point i have to reinstall, just impossible to kill the hog data it seems.

Edit: I was deleting all backup folders on backup HDD manually, i had no other choice. Still need to tackle the bloated system C drive, that one is unfortunately a critical thing.

I was enabling "show hidden files", then i got 67 GB on all files (drive C), still way below the 98 GB mark, something is hogging.

CCleaner will let you delete the restore points you want to delete.

Ivy said:

How to properly turn off? Schedule is turned of but still full of data hog.

I was deleting all backup entrys but still 289 GB data on my backup drive.

Guess at some point i have to reinstall, just impossible to kill the hog data it seems.

Click to expand...

Google turns up all your questions with simple searches. At least put some effort into this.

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=how+to+disable+system+restore+windows+7

I asked how to properly turn off, my methods doesnt seem to work... nor those i actually found.

Anyway, i was simply deleting the backup drive by brute force, no other option.

Whats left is how to clean the system C drive, it seems there is a total of 67 GB (including hidden folders) stored but the system is asking for 95 GB (shadow copy removed), so it means 28 GB for nothing? Hibernate is deactivated long ago. Of course 67 GB is crazy too, i dunno how it can ask for so much, i try find out.

Would still be great if you would download and post windirstat to see a visual representation on where all of your files are located.

What a mess of a thread. It is OK for him not to Google anything and to ask us for detailed instructions here instead, no matter how trivial.
It is also OK for anyone else to ignore this thread if they have a problem with that. We don't tell people to Google anything, they can and should post on the forums instead. We then post help or we ignore the thread. They can choose to ask the same thing multiple times. We post answers multiple times or we ignore the thread.


Lots of good advice but it is unclear what you have tried and what you have not tried.
1. If you have turned your System Restore off, if you have turned your hibernation off like this:

Disable hibernate mode from DOS Command prompt: Start Menu > Run... > cmd > powercfg -h off

2. And turned off Restore like this: Start Menu > Right click on Computer > Properties > System protection > Configure >
Turn off system protection > OK > Yes > OK >


3. If you have done both, rebooted, with no significant reduction in reclaimed space, and if you for whatever reason can't do whatever else they suggested above, try this, download the 30 day trial of this program. It will tell you exactly what is taking up space and where:

https://www.jam-software.de/custome...guage=EN&PHPSESSID=av5747ho1quis8cguoqq0g00s3

You can also answer and clarify previously posted questions about what you have done, but if you just do the three things in this post, we'll be closer to figuring out what is taking up your hard drive space.

We can absolutely tell people to Google something, especially if the answer is incredibly easy to find. I was even nice and included a link, which gives him the exact same results I saw. We can't give "let me google that for you" links.

god bless

Just to ask a question in line with the OP , would turning off the shadow volumes in Services help ? And is it advisable ?

I'm not sure, but do I have a problem with storage?



If you all didn't tell me how stupid I was I wouldn't know the truth interesting lil app, no clue what it means though.