Windows 10 Recovery Drive Full

[troublepuppy]

I do not save anything to the 😧 recovery drive on my machine and I have had my laptop for about 2 years now and the other day I started to receive a notification that my recovery drive.

I have read a lot of articles online about this and people suggest deleting files from the drive, but I do not save things to that drive so the only files (shown and hidden files) are all related to recovery.  The backup that is on that drive is only about 1.5GB, but when about 15GB is classified as "other files".

So what is the correct way to handle this issue, as in what is a real solution, because there seems to be a lot of options and opinion online about this, like:

-Create a new recovery drive abd change the drive name of the current one (this is not a real solution, this is a workaround)

-Change the size of the current recovery drive (this is not a real solution, this is a workaround because it will continue to grow)

-Delete the recover drive (not the best idea just in case I actually need to recover)

-Delete files from the recovery dive (as previously notated, what "files" because the only ones in there are related to recovery and I only have 1 actual backup of my laptop)

-Don't do anything and just make a regedit to stop the notification (again, a workaround)

[IT_WinSec]

Hello @troublepuppy

Welcome to the HP Support forum. Thank you for posting.

LOL, I'd say this is total overkill.

You can just leave it like that or take some action but not so drastic. Deleting the entire partition or everything inside is too much.

The recovery file should not be affected by some extra files in the recovery partition.

HP has created official articles about such an issue you experience now. Please, check it and follow the steps offered:

>> http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01508532  (Win Vista)

>> http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03737312  (Win 8 or Win 10 , but can be used as a reference for any Win version)

Hope this helps! Let me know how it goes.

[troublepuppy]

Thank you.  I agree.  Some of the stuff that is out there was  bit overkill.

As for taking "some action" I am not sure what that would even be, because like I said I never use the drive for my stuff and just the other day I got the notification about it.

Any suggesstions on what "some action" could be that I could take?  

Like I said, I personally do not have any of my stuff on the drive and there is only a single backup on there that is not taking much space but according to the following setting, "other files" are taking up almost 15GB.  

Windows 10 > settings > system > storage > recovery (D:)

'Other' = 15.7 GB

'System and reserved' = 321 MB

'Documents' = 1.96 MB

Everything else = 0 bytes

Thank you for that link, but I have already done that and that is why I am saying I am not sure what files I could even delete from the folder, because I do not know what really has to be there or not.  

[IT_WinSec]

Most people just purge the System Restore folder/files for this recovery partition and this solves the issue. Have you done that as per the instructions ? 

Also, run Disk Clean up - run it for the primary C parition, as well as for the recovery one. Here is how >> https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/3012-open-use-disk-cleanup-windows-10-a.html

Next step would be to open the recovery partition and take a screenshot of all files/folders you see there. Here is how > https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/windows.html

Post back the picture here

[troublepuppy]

I did all the clean ups in the links provided.  Attached are 2 screenshots of my 😧 drive.  Thank you for your help!

MasterChief is the name of my laptop, when you see that in the screenshots.  🙂

[IT_WinSec]

How big is this file called "Masterchief" dated/edited on 06/28 at 08:27  ?  Right click it, choose Properties and tell me.

What happens if you double click it and attempt to run it ? Explain and take screenshots, please.

Based on the icon I guess it is some sort of backup of Windows (files backup) stored there.

As you can see here at the bottom of the article > https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03737312

such a file should not be there.

Please, confirm.

[troublepuppy]

When I double click it, I get the popup message:

So I clicked on the 'Manage space used by this back up, and it is only using 1.83 GB out of the 16 GB

So then I clicked on 'View Backups' and this is what is listed:

So this backup file is not taking up all the space.  Whatever is classified as 'other' is what is taking up all the space.

Thank you!

[troublepuppy]

I forgot to mention, before I even made the inital post, I did the cleanup option on 😧 and from the start, it has only ever showed 0 for these items.  They have been 0 this entire time.

[IT_WinSec]

No, this is it, exactly as expected. Your screenshot confirms it.

The backup container does not take all of the space but it takes enough space to trigger the auto-alarm.

You posted about a week ago and 2 days before you posted a backup container of about 2 GB has been created on partition 😧  which caused Windows to trigger the alarm of lack of disk space.

You do not need this "Masterchief" backup container there in Recovery (D:\) and I recommend you manually delete it.

This should emplty less than 2 GB space (1.83) and will stop the Windows alarms because you will then have enough disk space. This is data file backup of the 😧 - you do not need such a thing (back up of a backup stored on the same partition)

The recovery image files themselves are big, they are inside these folders you see and they are several GB as expected - they should be kept there if you want a working recovery partition.

In order to prevent further data file backups in 😧 , go to Control Panel > Backup and Restore (Windows 7)

Make sure back up is not setup there and not scheduled to run.

This should solve your issue. Do not hesitate to post again if you face difficulties.

If you believe this solves your issue, please accept this comment as a solution.

[troublepuppy]

IT_WinSec

First, thank you very much for all your help!  

I went ahead and deleted that backup file and went into settings and cancelled the schedule that was set.  I am not sure how this got changed, I usually do my backups on an external drive and for some reason it was switched to my 😧 drive.