Empty disk shows as full in Windows 11

I noticed that in Windows 11, my RAM disk occasionally gets "full" with left over files that do not exist. It shows as almost full in Windows explorer and allows no more storage, but there are no files in it. The only solution at this point is to unmount and remount the disk.

Although it is probably not SoftPerfect RAM Disk problem, because I have exactly the same issue in ImDisk software.

RAM disk is merely a block storage, like a regular disk drive. I contains what the system puts there; no more, no less.

If you have a full disk issue, it's something to do with the file system. Usually it's hidden files and folders that aren't shown in Windows Explorer. It could also be NTFS metadata that takes up the space.

You could try using a tool like WinDirStat to find out what's taking the space, or running chkdsk.exe in a command prompt, or using exFAT as it's doesn't keep as much metadata as NTFS does.

Hello again,

It seems to be a bug with Windows 11. In Windows 10 there wasn't such an issue.

It's not hidden files, almost everything is deleted. Although, explorer shows 15 files (so there are some files actually), and chkdsk shows 85 files in my latest test.

Running chkdsk with /f recovers the storage without showing any errors because of unmounting, probably because of the release of the HANDLE objects.

It seems that Windows likes to keep HANDLEs open for some reason in RAM drives.

In that case please try turning on either of these options:

• Hard-Disk Emulation. This will emulate an entire hard drive with partitions rather than a standalone volume. Some Windows features like Volume Shadow Copy require a hard disk drive; or
• Mount As Removable. This will let Windows know that the drive can be removed at any point and it should theoretically close handles and flush all files as soon as possible.