Windows 10 How do I recover lost (invisible) drive space taken up by Windows Store/Gamepass apps from a previous Windows10 installation?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Zaerin87
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Zaerin87

Hi all,


I have a 1TB SSD which currently has around 200GB of its capacity being taken up by "invisible" files.


I had a weird situation the other day with my main OS disk, causing me to have to reinstall Windows 10 without being able to make a backup or any restore points, so a fresh install really.


No biggie (aside from the files I lost, but that's not the issue here). Easily done. The new fresh windows install meant I had to reinstall some of my Gamepass games.


Setting the default install location from C:\ to E:\ (my 1TB storage SSD) prompted a popup that said it had found files from a different device, and these would have to be deleted. So I okayed it, set the new default install location, and proceeded to reinstall my games.


But when I took a closer look at my drive capacity, I can see that there's about ~570GB being taken up by old games and apps (installed through other platforms/regular means), so I should have around ~430GB left. However, the drive only shows that I have ~240GB left. That means there's about ~190GB missing.





Now, I had a BUNCH of games installed through Gamepass, so it seems very likely that these games are the culprits and are taking up this amount of space. But I am unable to view these files in any way, shape, or form.


There is no "hidden folder" visible. The new WindowsApps folder only shows the game I have redownloaded and installed currently (Hollow Knight) and seems empty other than that. Tools like WinDirStat also don't seem to show the files or folders anywhere.


So I can't delete them, while they're just sitting there eating up almost a fifth of my total drive capacity.


Are there any fixes for this? I'm more than happy to reinstall these games, so they don't need to be saved or anything. I just need to get rid of them to get my space back.


Thanks in advance,


Sincerely,

Zaerin

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