Storage Bug on Microsoft Windows 11 Could Eat Up 500 GB Disk Space

lokamoka820 · 2026-07-07T09:17:35-0500

The file responsible is CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal, a write-ahead log for the database Windows uses to track camera, microphone, and location permission requests. It's supposed to stay a few megabytes and clear itself out after about a month. Instead, it can balloon past 500GB, sitting in a folder Windows won't even let you open to check.

This is not something new that has popped over the past few months, a Reddit thread from a year ago had the same file ballooning to 513GB on someone else's machine, with no folder anywhere to explain where the space went.

The official fix didn't show up until June 29, quietly tacked onto the release notes under the "Change log" section for a preview update that had already shipped six days earlier.

But not everyone will have this now, as the full rollout is expected with the July 2026 Patch Tuesday update, which is well over a year after the first reports started showing up.