Hard Disk Space Mystery Challenge!

[nethermead]

This is weird. I can find no info on anything like this, so maybe you guys can help.

My C: Windows drive is partitioned to 14 gigs. Over the last few months, the free space has been slowly disappearing -- it's now down to 100 meg free -- BUT there's only about 6.5 gigs of files on the drive. There should be over 7 gigs free.

Note that I've set up the virtual memory paging file to reside on my E: partition. There's no paging file on C:.

The only folder on the drive I can't check is the System Volume Information folder. I've checked for viruses/trojans/adware with Symantec and Adaware and nada.

Any ideas?

 

[tinyabs]

Use Windows Cleaup or other advanced utilities to find out.

 

[Mojoed]

Originally posted by: nethermead
This is weird. I can find no info on anything like this, so maybe you guys can help.

My C: Windows drive is partitioned to 14 gigs. Over the last few months, the free space has been slowly disappearing -- it's now down to 100 meg free -- BUT there's only about 6.5 gigs of files on the drive. There should be over 7 gigs free.

Note that I've set up the virtual memory paging file to reside on my E: partition. There's no paging file on C:.

As far as the disappearing space goes, does your machine crash a lot? If so search for and delete all matches for *.dmp. Depending on your settings, these .dmp files could be HUGE. Do you clear your temporary and temporary internet files often? Is hibernate enabled? If so you have a hidden file equal to the amount of RAM in your system. Try viewing all hidden files and do a search for all files 2MB+. Got any P2P programs? 'unfinished downloads' directories can become quite large if no maintenence is done. Also, the 'System Restore' feature reserves up to 12% of your partition.

Also, do you realize you've LOWERED the performance of your system by partitioning your boot disk and moving your page file to a different partition on the same disk? You'd be better off having one large C: drive and duplicating your page file on a second disc on a master channel. Windows will use which ever page file it can depending on system load.

 

[imported_manchild]

adjust your folder view settings to show hidden files & folders and to not hide protected operating sytem files. your mystery files might show up then

 

[Tyrant222]

cripes this happens to me too. mojoed has some good tips


cant identify where the crap is to delete it, searching does nothing.

we need a real answer.

EDIT: happening as I speak, can account for 2.12gb, yet it shows 3.74 being used.

 

[Mojoed]

A few other things I forgot to mention.

If you clicked 'yes' to install ESPN Motion, (or any other similar program) it will QUICKLY eat up a ton of disk space. On my system in two days it downloaded over 600MB of .wmv files all on it's own without my knowing until I discovered these files by accident. Many programs of this type save their files in the hidden "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\*". You need to show hidden and system files to see what is lurking in there. What I'm saying is there are many programs like this that you wouldn't expect, that just eats up disk space like crazy.

Also hidden in the ..\windows folder are folders named "$NtUninstall*$". Many people will say keep these folders in the event you need to uninstall a patch or service pack. Personally I delete them. I've never had a reason to ever uninstall a patch or service pack. Nor have I ever had a problem resulting from the deletion of these folders/files. If you upgraded from SP1 to SP2 and chose to save old files, you'll have an additional folder which adds up to several hundred MB and thousands of files. If you installed SP1 for MS office and kept the old files per MS recommendation, that's another 200MB+ wasted. Nuke this too.

Assuming you have 1GB of RAM, your default dynamic pagefile should be 1.5GB-3.0GB. You can change this to a static 1-1.5GB. I can't ever remember pushing my pagefile beyong 1GB, let alone 1.5GB, so you should be fine with this unless you happen to use all your RAM and then some.

Shutting off system restore will also reclaim disk space. If you regularly manually image your os/data, it lessens the need for system restore. Personally mine is shut off and I've never had a problem. YMMV.

Another potentially big disk hog are the .dbx files Outlook Express uses. If you save your sent items and don't clear your deleted items and have an overall messy inbox, these hidden .dbx files can grow into the hundreds of MB's. At the very least, clean up your email folders and select 'compact all folders' from the file menu.

Keep an eye out for certain programs which create a 'setup' folder during installation. This is redundant and unecessary in my opinion, and can be nuked. For example when installing diskeeper, this happens:

It gets installed to: "C:\Tools\Executive Software\Diskeeper" (keep)
and leaves behind: "C:\Tools\Executive Software\Diskeeper Setup" (nuke this)


There are more disk hogs out there, but this is all I can think of right now.

Good luck!