Venue 8 Pro - shrinking free disk space!

Based on my recent experience on the shrinking space issue, possible culprits:

-- A web browser may be storing files for future reference.  Clean out stored browser files (including for favorites), under the browser settings.  I "recovered" more than 1GB by doing so, as I found that my favorites, which have grown considerably over the years, were storing a great amount of related files--eliminating the stored files did little to affect my Internet browsing speeds.

-- The hibernate file (hiberfil.sys, under C:/), takes up considerable space (in my case, well over 1GB).  Consider turning the hibernate feature off (instructions available through an Internet search)--most users probably aren't using the hibernate feature itself on the DV8P, and while the file also is supposed to speed booting up, the DV8P boots up so quickly without it (for me, under 10 seconds), little is lost.

-- The pagefile.sys file (under C:/), in its default settings, also uses considerable space over time after the DV8P is booted up (in my case, to over 1.5GB in a session).  The file is used/needed to enhance the amount of current memory available and being used, by using storage space to augment it.  Consider changing the file's settings from Automatic to a cap on the amount of space the file can use.  Again, instructions available through an Internet search.

Hopefully, one or more of these suggestions will help others in dealing with mysteriously disappearing space on the DV8P, an issue that had totally mystified and frustrated me (and continues to do so . . .).

Same issue with a 64GB Venue, space eaten and couldn't figure out why.  I happened on a disk cleaner (with other features as well) Ccleaner from Piriform which had Bing as one of it's options to check for cleaning.  That option was not on the maintenance tool I had been using regularly.  I scanned with Ccleaner and Bing was storing over 5GB on my Venue from the MSN news I read regularly.  After running this I gained about 7GB back.  I use only the free version.  Just wanted to put this out there in case it's helpful to anyone bewildered by this issue as I was.

Same issue with a 64GB Venue, space eaten and couldn't figure out why.  I happened on a disk cleaner (with other features as well) Ccleaner from Piriform which had Bing as one of it's options to check for cleaning.  That option was not on the maintenance tool I had been using regularly.  I scanned with Ccleaner and Bing was storing over 5GB on my Venue from the MSN news I read regularly.  After running this I gained about 7GB back.  I use only the free version.  Just wanted to put this out there in case it's helpful to anyone bewildered by this issue as I was.

some suggestions that helped me:

• I do not recommend third party tools, disk cleanup should take care of the neccesary things, just be sure you click "cleanup system files", on one occasion, I was able to clear a whopping 24GB
  
  
• I normally wouldn't recommend this one, but if you are running out of space I would consider it essential. for more info about this procedure see here (what this does is remove old/duplicate versions of files that have been replaced by updates, meaning existing updates won't be able to be uninstalled, but that is something we typically never need to do anyway. so, you can do this by opening a command prompt as admin. firstly, enter this command to  check how much it's using: Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore
  To proceed with the actual process of cleaning up, enter this command: Dism.exe /online /cleanup-image /StartComponentCleanup
  it may take a while to complete.
  
  
• I switched from Microsoft Office and now use OpenOffice or LibreOffice. both are open source and a fraction of the size.
  
  
• Opinion: it's not a good idea to use programs like ccleaner, but if you decide to, I recommend that you leave the System Registry alone, not only is the space you'll save insignificant by 'cleaning' it, there's a high probability that it will do more harm than good. Everything in it is there for a good reason. (if my registry was very bogged down, I would just create a new user profile, move my files to that, and remove the old profile, this can make the system feel fresh and zippy again. a couple of programs might need installing again).
  
  
• Manually go through the temp folders and check if there are any leftover files, try opening these with hidden and system files turned on (just paste one into the address bar in windows explorer):
  %LocalAppData%\Temp\
  %WinDir%\Temp\
  %Temp%
  %TMP%
  
  
• If you don't use / don't wish to use Hibernation mode (writes out memory to disk, fully powers off, boots to restored state on wake) but wish instead to use sleep mode (quickly enters very low power standby mode, memory is kept in place, instantly resumes) (in addition to normal startup/shutdown of course) then you can enter this in a command prompt as admin and potentially save a few GB (click here for more details about this): powercfg -h off
  if you change your mind you can turn it back on: powercfg -h on
  
  
• On windows 10, there is a command to compact system files which can save a couple of GB, open a command prompt as admin, and enter this command: compact /compactos:always
  be prepared to wait a long time for that to complete. I find it helps to reboot twice after it says it's finished.
  
  
• Obvious: Clear your browser cache, for every browser. (cookies don't take up much space, and you may want to keep those). Also check the HTML5 File System folders for any left over stuff, something similar to this: %LocalAppData%\Chromium\User Data\Default\File System
  
  
• Totally Obvious Things: if you have a slot for MicroSDHC card, get the biggest one your device supports, and make sure it's fast (class10), and store your documents, videos, pictures, videos, etc on that instead of the internal storage. preferably though, if your device has a removable internal storage that is upgradable like, msata, m2sata, etc. then you're in luck, upgrade that component if you can afford to. I would go for something no smaller than at least 128GB these days.