Windows Server 2008 R2 Finding Hidden files that are causing drive to fill up
        Posted  
        
            by 
                Xaxum
            
        on Server Fault
        
        See other posts from Server Fault
        
            or by Xaxum
        
        
        
        Published on 2012-11-07T20:24:16Z
        Indexed on 
            2012/11/13
            11:06 UTC
        
        
        Read the original article
        Hit count: 374
        
windows-server-2008
|hidden-files
What is the best way to find out what files are sucking up so much space? My Windows directory lists its size as 15 GB but when I run a powershell script against it, it shows 40 GB. It seems 40 GB is about right because if I use that 40 GB and add it to the rest of my folders on C I get the 45 GB that is in use.
I checked volume shadow copy and that is disabled and there are no volume shadow files listed. My page file is limited to 3 GB. How can I find out what files are taking 25 GB of space?
Final Results: We ended up disabling UAC and then the Properties showed the true file size of the Windows folder, as shown in powershell script. This allowed us to drill down to the folder that had the issues... In our case it was in C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local\VMware\VDM there were several large dump files, these were the mysterious unknown files in WinDirStat. It turns out our nessus scan is crashing a view service for a couple seconds so it creates a large dump file. So we will try this.. https://discussions.nessus.org/thread/5212
© Server Fault or respective owner