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johnsotw Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:15am
Steam games taking up disk space after uninstaling them.
I could not uninstall several steam games through windows uninstaller, and could not delete the local content from steam. so I went in and manually deleted the game files. Windows still shows my hard drive shows I only freed up about 5 Gb, even after emptying the trash bin (about 100 Gb).

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Showing 1-15 of 24 comments
fluxtorrent Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:16am 
Do you have more than 1 harddrive?

Edit: or partition.
Last edited by fluxtorrent; Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:17am
#1
johnsotw Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:17am 
Yes,

a SSD with the OS on it, and several games were on there, and a much larger HDD that had several games swell.
Last edited by johnsotw; Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:19am
#2
fluxtorrent Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:21am 
Did you check both drives for reduction? I've seen that happen more than once with multiple drives. Usually forget which one ACTUALLY has the data stored in recycling bin. Although it is compressed in there as well so you still wont see 100gb free assuming it wasnt empty to begin with.
#3
johnsotw Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:24am 
yeah. I deleted about 5 games off each drive. and neither came down in storage space.
#4
[AU] Tabris:DarkPeace Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:26am 
Run the Disk Cleanup Wizard on both drives and clear out 'shadowed' files and System Restore info on all drives.
#5
fluxtorrent Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:26am 
Depending on the games 5gb might be all there was to shave off... hmm I don't receommend file shredders unless you KNOW what you are doing
#6
johnsotw Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:28am 
it was some big games, GTA was 20 gigs on its own. plus ARK, Mad Max, a bunch of others. I am running a chkdsk right now see if that convinces the computer to notice all the free space.
#7
johnsotw Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:28am 
disk cleanup was one of the first things I did, and a restart
#8
[AU] Tabris:DarkPeace Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:29am 
Clear out 'shadowed' files and System Restore info on all drives.

That is 100% the problem.

It's under Advanced System Settings / Properties.
#9
fluxtorrent Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:31am 
Hmm barring the off chance that you restored instead of deleted the recycling bin by accident (i'd check personally just because ive done that before, being a bonehead lol) I'd suggest following up with a file shredder and/or contacting your OS specific support team. The file management system varies from OS to OS and there are too many variables in why a file may not have deleted properly.
#10
johnsotw Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:38am 
I am on windows 10, and I tried deleting the shadow copy. but it did not seem to run. unless that process is instant. I checked and the recycle bin is empty, and the files are not back in the steam install folders.
#11
[AU] Tabris:DarkPeace Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:40am 
The Shadow copies obviously didn't delete then.

Can you downgrade to Windows 7 SP1 as it doesn't have that bug?
#12
johnsotw Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:43am 
This computer came windows 10, so I don't have a copy of 7
#13
[AU] Tabris:DarkPeace Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:46am 
Ouch...
#14
johnsotw Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:47am 
yeah. I am starting to think I will have to wipe and reinstall, I have about 10 gigs left on my SSD, not causing any problems yet
#15
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Date Posted: Oct 19, 2015 @ 1:15am
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