Measure Restricted areas

When you finish, the areas Windows kept private have been measured and merged into the existing Scan, or nothing has changed at all.

Why a Scan leaves Unknown Space behind

PoppyDisk runs without administrator rights, so Windows keeps some folders private from it. A Scan does not stop at those folders: it marks each one Restricted, shown in purple on the Disk Map, and carries on. Whatever is inside a Restricted folder cannot be measured, so its bytes end up in Unknown Space, the used space on the Drive root that the Scan could not attribute to any folder. See What the sizes mean.

Measuring those areas means asking Windows for administrator permission once. PoppyDisk does this in the narrowest way it can: a separate helper measures only the folders you asked about and cannot delete anything, while the app you are using stays unprivileged. See How administrator access works.

Prerequisites

Before you start

A finished Scan with Restricted rows or Unknown Space. See Scan a Drive.
A Windows account that can approve an administrator prompt.
Not Demo Mode. Demo Mode refuses administrator measurement, so Windows is never asked.

Measure only the Restricted folders

When a Scan finishes with a lot of Unknown Space, more than 10 GiB or more than 5 percent of the used space, the result view shows a notice headed Restricted space is significant. It says how many folders Windows kept private and how much space PoppyDisk measured but could not see into, and asks whether to measure with administrator access.

Caution

The next step makes Windows show its administrator prompt. Approving it lets PoppyDisk's helper read the Restricted folders on this Scan and nothing else. Declining it changes nothing.

Choose Measure in the notice. Windows shows its administrator prompt for PoppyDisk. While it waits, the notice reads Measuring with administrator access and Waiting for Windows.
Approve the prompt. The notice shows each Restricted path as it is measured, and the result updates in place. When it finishes, the result carries the badge Includes administrator measurements and the folders that were Restricted now carry the sizes the helper found.

While the notice is showing, each Restricted row in the Details Panel also offers Measure. It starts the same measurement.

If you would rather not, choose Not now. The notice goes away for this result and the Scan stays as it was. To measure later, use Scan as administrator below, or Rescan the Drive so the notice can appear again.

Measure the whole Drive as administrator

If you want the entire Scan repeated with administrator access rather than topped up, use Scan as administrator in the Scan result.

Choose Scan as administrator. PoppyDisk first explains what it will do: Measure the full root with administrator access? Windows will ask for permission, and PoppyDisk will only measure this Scan and will not delete anything.
Choose Continue. Windows shows its administrator prompt.
Approve the prompt. A new Scan of the whole root starts and opens as its own result, separate from the one you were reading.

Cancel at the explanation returns you to the result with nothing started.

The Scan as administrator entry in a Drive row's menu on the Drive Overview is disabled and marked Not yet. It does nothing today; the working version is the one in the Scan result.

If you decline the Windows prompt

PoppyDisk says Administrator access wasn’t granted. Nothing changed. The Scan, its result, and your Drive are exactly as they were. Nothing was measured, and nothing needs undoing.

If the measurement fails for another reason, the result reports The Elevated Rescan could not be completed. with the reason. See Fix scanning and results problems.