How to find out what's taking up so much HD space?

[Muse]

My Lenovo T60 laptop has a 60GB HD. Windows XP reports that there's only 1.5GB free! Offhand I only see <25GB used:

Data 7.5GB
Windows 5.5GB
Program Files 1.2GB
Programs (programs I installed) 2.8GB
Documents and Settings 3GB
Recycle Bin (nothing)
Pagefile ~2GB
Hibernate file ~3GB (maybe I can get rid of this by turning off hibernation, I don't usually use it)

That accounts for about 24GB. How can I determine what's taking up all that HD space without checking the properties of every first level Windows directory?

Edit: I just checked each folder in turn and see less than 5GB among them. What could be up with this? How do I find out what's taking up all that space? :\

 

[stlcardinals]

Windirstat http://windirstat.info/

It's a really nice open source program that will even give you a graphical map of the files on your hard drive.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

you can also try searching for files over a certain size, make sure you select hidden and system files too.

 

[JackMDS]

What the size of actual the C: partition is?

Try to run cCleaner and see if it get rid of Junk that does not appear in Win Explorer.

Check the status of the Sys Restore space.

 

[TAandy]

TreeSize Free?

http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

 

[Danube]

I don't know about XP but in Vista I'll often show having 350GB on disk when I know I only have 175 or so. The difference is the backups that system restore makes. If I go to My Computer and click Properties for C and then hit disk clean-up. I get an option on the "More Options" tab to delete "shadow copies" used in restore points. After I delete those I get all my phantom space back

 

[bob4432]

sequoia view

 

[corkyg]

System Restore, MFT files MFT Reserved Zone, Metadata files, page file. And, your perhaps biggest space hog are Temporary Internet Files. You can remove them in IE/Tools.

 

[Muse]

What the size of actual the C: partition is?

Try to run cCleaner and see if it get rid of Junk that does not appear in Win Explorer.

Check the status of the Sys Restore space.

Yeah, I can't see the Sys Restore space. Evidently hidden. There's only one evident partition, could there be a hidden partition?

The C: partition is around 50 GB available space and there's ~2GB free. It's a "60GB" HD.

 

[Muse]

System Restore, MFT files MFT Reserved Zone, Metadata files, page file. And, your perhaps biggest space hog are Temporary Internet Files. You can remove them in IE/Tools.

Aren't temp int files under Documents and Settings? That's already accounted for. Where is the metadata? Pagefile is accounted for, see OP, around 2GB. What's the MFT and where would it be?

 

[Muse]

Windirstat http://windirstat.info/

It's a really nice open source program that will even give you a graphical map of the files on your hard drive.

That I'm going to do. Thanks!

sequoia view

Or this.

TreeSize Free?

http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

Or this!

Thanks, all!

 

[Muse]

I don't know about XP but in Vista I'll often show having 350GB on disk when I know I only have 175 or so. The difference is the backups that system restore makes. If I go to My Computer and click Properties for C and then hit disk clean-up. I get an option on the "More Options" tab to delete "shadow copies" used in restore points. After I delete those I get all my phantom space back

To my knowledge I've never done a backup on the system. It very frequently asks me if I want to do a restore (Yes/No) and I always click No. I suppose there could be an automated system backup thing happening, however.

The odd thing is that the machine used to prompt me frequently and annoyingly to do a defrag, saying that there was undo fragmentation. This with over 20 GB free. Lately it's stopped doing that. I don't remember doing anything to stop automatic checking for fragmentation. The program is the Diskkeeper Lite that came preinstalled on the machine. Doesn't have a great reputation, but I didn't want to pay for a better program. With only 2GB free, you'd think it would be bugging me now. :\

 

[corkyg]

Aren't temp int files under Documents and Settings? That's already accounted for. Where is the metadata? Pagefile is accounted for, see OP, around 2GB. What's the MFT and where would it be?

Not necessarily. They are whereever you want to put them. I keep mine on my data RAID i array, far from my OS drive.

BTW - 2 GB is almost making your drive choke to death. I always keep at least 25&#37; of my HDDs free. My T60 now has a 320 GB drive, and that greatly improves performance.

 

[Danube]

To my knowledge I've never doing a backup on the system. It very frequently asks me if I want to do a restore (Yes/No) and I always click No. I suppose there could be an automated system backup thing happening, however.

The odd thing is that the machine used to prompt me frequently and annoyingly to do a defrag, saying that there was undo fragmentation. This with over 20 GB free. Lately it's stopped doing that. I don't remember doing anything to stop automatic checking for fragmentation. The program is the Diskkeeper Lite that came preinstalled on the machine. Doesn't have a great reputation, but I didn't want to pay for a better program. With only 2GB free, you'd think it would be bugging me now. :\

My machine never prompts me for anything but does massive backups anyway (again I am on Vista)

 

[Dahak]

For the Thinkpads usually it is the Thinkvantage automated backups that take all the space. By default it is turned on and backups to the C drive. You have to delete the backups that it has currently made and then turn off the scheduler

Should be in the Thinkvantage rescue and recovery.

 

[Muse]

Not necessarily. They are whereever you want to put them. I keep mine on my data RAID i array, far from my OS drive.

BTW - 2 GB is almost making your drive choke to death. I always keep at least 25% of my HDDs free. My T60 now has a 320 GB drive, and that greatly improves performance.

Was it difficult to switch HDs? I'm seriously considering buying a 320GB or 500GB before I install Windows 7 32 bit Home Premium. I have the disk already. I suppose it's easiest to install the bigger HD prior to an OS upgrade.

 

[Muse]

For the Thinkpads usually it is the Thinkvantage automated backups that take all the space. By default it is turned on and backups to the C drive. You have to delete the backups that it has currently made and then turn off the scheduler

Should be in the Thinkvantage rescue and recovery.

If that's what's going on it totally snuck up on me. As I said, for some reason the default Diskkeeper Lite stopped warning me about fragmentation, too. :\ Really, I've been putting off installing Windows 7 and maybe a bigger new (don't have one yet) HD because the system has been pretty trouble free, and I've been pretty busy.

 

[Muse]

I went into ThinkVantage/Rescue and Recovery/Advanced/Delete Backups and found 1/2 a dozden backups. I never knew they were there.<C:>RRBackups is denied access from Explorer. No nonesense allowed. Well, I decided to delete all but the first backup. I don't know why I'd want any really since I plan to install Windows 7. :\ I now have 16 GB, free, so deleting those backups restored ~14GB HD space.