Personally, I have never seen this many issues with Windows like today. Even way back in the Windows Vista days. Woah, Windows Vista will be 20 years old in November…
If you are forced to still be on Windows 11.
This file can be found in the following directory,
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\CapabilityAccessManager\
Then see if it shows a huge file size.
Windows Latest found that one particular file called “CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal” can use most of your system storage.
If your PC is affected, the safest fix is to install Windows 11 KB5095093 from Windows Update, or wait for the July 2026 Patch Tuesday update, where the fix is expected to roll out automatically.
I messed up with one computer. It is a huge server with RAID on Windows 11 and like 100TB’s of storage on it… No way I was going to risk it and accidentally erase the used storage while installing Linux. That is the only one on Windows 11 for me. If it was just 5TB’s or something, I would just get an external hard drive to copy everything. But it is much more than that, not all of the 100TB’s is used though. It has to sit on Windows 11.
Don’t worry. Windows will auto update or update your storage driver and you will loose the data anyway! Good luck while it lasts.
Disconnect the drives and insert a new one and install Linux. Then reconnect the drives.
Or just unplug the SAS cable or whatever, depending on the hardware.
That sounds like a problem that you should deal with even if you stay on Windows 😄 Maybe I just enjoy organizing things
Do you have over 60TB’s of storage that you need like me?
Well, is horse porn a want or a need?
I do not and so I shouldn’t be one to judge
Is it data that could be recovered if needed? That’s where my concern is coming from. Not being able to back it up to fix OS issues might mean that you can’t back it up at all
Over 60,000 GB’s. As stated, it is all in RAID. Unless I get a giant external one. Which I don’t even know if that exists to buy. It would be super expensive if so.
Not talking here about Linux anymore. If you have the data in only one site, and the data is irreplaceable, you have a problem right now. Having it in a RAID gives you some breathing room, but you still should plan and execute a remote backup, somehow. At least for the really critical data. Fire, floods and other phenomena are hard or impossible to predict, and you could lose everything. If it’s not that critical, and you simply don’t want the hassle of moving 60TB, I can really empathize with that.