Where did my 10 GB go?

So, I've got this weird situation where about 10GB is just... gone. Like, vanished from my hard drive and I have zero clue why. I feel like I've looked everywhere, man. I even checked System Restore, but that wasn't it. I actually went ahead and turned that off, and now it's only taking up maybe 1%—like 2GB or something. I don't know, maybe it's just a glitchy drive? Or maybe I should be turning something else off? Honestly, I've reinstalled Windows so many times lately that I'm wondering if I've just left a bunch of digital junk scattered everywhere. Also, does anyone know a solid program that can totally wipe a drive clean? You know, like a factory reset where nothing can ever be recovered, kind of like when you first buy a drive, so I can just start fresh with a clean Windows install?

Try running Disk Cleanup and see what it turns up

Have you ever thought about clearing out all your old restore points through System Restore except for the most recent one? I actually managed to free up nearly 20 GB just by doing that recently.

Here is the link if you want to check it out:http://windows.microsoft.com/hr-hr/w...#1TC=windows-7

I took a look and, honestly, there’s nothing there. Everything looks totally clean to me. I mean, maybe the issue is with Service Pack 1? I'm running Windows 7

I already tried that "Roger Rogers4" suggestion and honestly... nothing. I even went ahead and turned off System Restore, but still, zilch.

Just grab WinDirStat. It'll show you exactly which folders are hogging all your space.

Honestly, I’d just go ahead and perform a clean reinstall of Windows; whenever I run into these kinds of illogical glitches, that always ends up being the simplest way to fix things for me. 😁

So, does anyone actually know of a decent program to just totally wipe my hard drive? Like, I want to format the whole thing clean before I go ahead and reinstall Windows again.

Zachary Smith2 said:Does anyone know of a program that can completely wipe my hard drive basically format it so I can just do a fresh install of Windows?

You actually handle that during the installation process itself...

WinDirStat is actually a pretty handy tool—it’ll give you a visual breakdown of exactly how much space every single folder and file is hogging on your drive, which makes it much easier to spot what's worth deleting. You might want to take a peek at that hiberfil.sys file; if you're rocking a decent amount of RAM, that thing can grow to be absolutely massive! If you don't actually use the hibernation feature, you can just clear it out. Also, it wouldn't hurt to check your System Restore settings to see how much room those recovery points are eating up.
Now, if you're looking to just wipe the slate completely clean and delete everything, your best bet is really just formatting the partition—though, obviously, you'll have to go through the whole process of reinstalling Windows afterward.

So, I just realized this hiberfil.sys file was sitting there eating up like 6GB of my drive. Thanks for the help, man