I too have Windows 2012 Essentials eating up hard disk.
Yes, I tried chkdsk.
Yes I have tried optimization.

I too, installed WinDir ....    Unfortunately, in this case...  it has found 70-GB of something it can't identify either.  On a C:\  partition of 80GB, it was horrific.

Just a large "blob" ... is can't identify.. and has no extensions assigned to it either.   I am at loss as to where to go.
This is a small server.. and is not really connected to anything but the Internet (yes firewalls are up.)

I finally had to use a third party tool to increase the space. Now at 100GB, and whatever it is, is still consuming about  880MB per day.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

• Edited by Merle Wait Wednesday, July 22, 2015 5:32 PM

though there's a 64.7GB 'blob' showing as 'unidentified' the colour appears to indicate ttc, TrueType Colle(ction), from the legend on the right.

Leaky printer/display driver?

run a cmd window as admin, does 'dir c:\' show anything?

how about 'dir c:\  /ah'? (show attribute=hidden)

or maybe 'dir c:\  /as'? (show attribute=system)

Stranger Danger  :)

Hi Mr. Mick

http://blog.windirstat.info/20061013/unknown-space/comment-page-1/

Hi Merle:

Any update on this?  Please let us I-know.

Good day,
So last night (or early this morning).. I did the following:

a.) Reviewed every service that was running... and determine if there was any log or writing of data that might be associated with it.   - Found nothing.
b.) Turned on via Admin ability to look at every hidden/system/operating folders/files...
Went through every folder, possible....  looked a file sizes... anything.    Found nothing.
c.) For grins, moved Essentials "server folders", to different drives... nothing.
d.) Ran ChkDsk /r again.   Nothing.
e.) Read - re-read the blog above.   As pointed out in the blog, there were some that had exact same issue, that never seemed to be resolved either.
f.) Downloaded the new equivalent of FileSys mon...   didn't see anything.. but I was confused on how to filter down to specifically all C:\ drive activity.   Am going to move a version of FileSys mon, over and look at that tonight.
So from Tues, with 8GB, today we are 6.3GB free.

What is running on this server, to complete the background... is an email system.   It runs on a different drive.  From experience, I know its not the email server...  The only difference is this Essentials (and in-fact the only box that we have that runs essentials {we use it for development, training  and testing } )  All other machines are some of Win2012 Standard  (and yes some old 2003).   At any-rate, no experience of this issue.

I appreciate everyone suggestions and follow-up, I am just at a loss.  I plan on loading filemon (which I know how to set up the filter... ) and see if I can see track down what is writing what.   Saturday / weekend traffic should be much slower.

Windows Search Service problem?

The Windows.edb file grows very large in Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2838018

windows.edb size not correctly shown
https://bitbucket.org/windirstat/windirstat/issues/29/windowsedb-size-not-correctly-shown
 -- Merv Porter

==========================

Thanks Merv.

The *.edb files have been accounted for, and are very small.

Hi,

Try to use Windows Server built-in Disk Cleanup tool to free up the disk space, and More Option will provide you the function to clean up system restore and shadow copies:
c:\windows\SYSTEM32\cleanmgr.exe /[drive number]

Besides, as mentioned above, un-readable folder may displayed as unknown with tool Windirstat. You may try to determine the size of a folder/sub folder by PowerShell, and compare these data serval days later to find the growing folder:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff730945.aspx

Best Regards,
Eve Wang

I'll try the cleanmgr.

In running some drive tools.... the only two things that are consistently running against or on the C:\ drive is DFS and Storagemgt   executeables.

I will run the cleanmgr and see what happens.

Hi,

Is there any update about this problem? 

Best Regards,
Eve Wang