Sudden and significant bloat of Win10 system drive.

[Redcrown]

Reposting here after getting no love at dpreview. I have 2 Windows 10 computers. One a normal desktop, one a SurfacePro4 tablet. Over the last 2 weeks both suffered significant bloat on the system drive. I've cleaned them up, but I'm curious of the cause. I'm suspicious of Photoshop 2020, because that's the only installation I've performed on both units during the time frame.

The desktop had 20 files in the C:\System Volume folder totaling 16 gigs. These looked like System Restore/Shadow copies. Strangely, they were all dated at 1:00 am on successive days. Using the System Restore dialogue to delete all restore points did not remove the files. Neither did the OS disk cleanup utility. I had to use the "VSS" command prompt utility to set the max restore file space to the minimum 1GB. They immediately disappeared.

The SurfacePro4 had over 50k files totaling 116gb in the Windows/Temp directory. The files began with "APPX" followed by a long hash string. Disk Cleanup didn't touch them, but a manual delete was OK.

I'm hoping there are some Windows gurus here that can shed light or point me in a direction to further investigate. I suspect this bloat will return. 

[degrub]

Try over at AskWoody.com forums as well fir things Win10

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I'm hoping there are some Windows gurus here that can shed light or point me in a direction to further investigate. I suspect this bloat will return.

Not a Guru, and not sure if your installation up-to-date, but Windows started to reserve a significant amount of storage (multiple Gb) for the periodic/(bi-)annual Updates. You can check the amount that's set aside by running the Disk Cleanup App, in "Clean up System files" mode (activated with a button on the standard dialog pane). The  "Windows Update cleanup" option allows to 'clean up' remainders or updates that are cumulating for a coming update session.

Cheers,
Bart

[Pictus]

Reposting here after getting no love at dpreview. I have 2 Windows 10 computers. One a normal desktop, one a SurfacePro4 tablet. Over the last 2 weeks both suffered significant bloat on the system drive. I've cleaned them up, but I'm curious of the cause. I'm suspicious of Photoshop 2020, because that's the only installation I've performed on both units during the time frame.

The desktop had 20 files in the C:\System Volume folder totaling 16 gigs. These looked like System Restore/Shadow copies. Strangely, they were all dated at 1:00 am on successive days. Using the System Restore dialogue to delete all restore points did not remove the files. Neither did the OS disk cleanup utility. I had to use the "VSS" command prompt utility to set the max restore file space to the minimum 1GB. They immediately disappeared.

The SurfacePro4 had over 50k files totaling 116gb in the Windows/Temp directory. The files began with "APPX" followed by a long hash string. Disk Cleanup didn't touch them, but a manual delete was OK.

I'm hoping there are some Windows gurus here that can shed light or point me in a direction to further investigate. I suspect this bloat will return.

A bit late reply, not a guru, but...

APPX is stuff from the Windows pesky METRO applications...

Can use NirSoft TaskSchedulerView to see what is launched at 1:00 am
https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/task_scheduler_view.html

To Uninstall apps https://www.oo-software.com/en/ooappbuster
To better set Windows 10 stuff https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

Sysinternals Autoruns https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns
Process Hacker https://processhacker.sourceforge.io/
I love its file disk activity


For POWER users NTLite is magic
https://www.ntlite.com/

Excellent FREE Windows cleanup
https://www.bleachbit.org/


In preferences I enable the "Download and update cleaners from community (winapp2.ini)"


For Google Chrome, do not enable LOGS or it will conflict with some extensions.
(Chrome is crap, but it is useful to translate sites in languages I do not understand)