Win7 disk space question

[Kadarin]

My apologies if this has been discussed already...

I have Win7 Home Premium installed in a 60GB bootcamp partition on a retina MBP. The only software installed here are a whole lot of windows updates, Steam, Oblivion, Firefox, WinRAR. According to the system, I have less than 5GB free, whereas the total size of the directories that I can see do not exceed 20GB.

The internets say the discrepancy can come from "shadow copies", which presumably include multiple system restore points. This is a new install, and the only such would come from windowsupdate having created them at each reboot. However, after going through the procedure to remove restore points, I have freed up very little space.

So some questions:

Why is Win7 so inaccurate about disk space?
Why does a new install take almost 60GB of space?
What other than restore points could be taking up that space? (Presumably it's "files that I, the administrator, do not have privilege to view".)

Thanks for any help

 

[QuietDad]

If this is a FRESH install, there's alot of crap hanging around. Run Disk Cleanup from Windows 7 and you should get 4-5 gig back without out even trying. Win7 needs 16gb (20 for 64bit) just to install and thats before all the updates. SP1 installed thru updates leaves a copy of everything replaced AND a copy of SP1 hanging around in case you need to go back or enable a feature you weren't using when SP1 was installed. 200mb for Firefox, Stean is a MINIMUM 1GB, 5GB for Oblivion and all the restore points and it adds up. Disk Cleanup will also take out all but the newest restore point if you so desire.

 

[Kadarin]

There must be a tremendous amount of crap hanging around, but apparently I can't see any of it. I ran disk cleanup, told it to clean system files, and now I have 3.4GB free out of 60GB. Looking to the intarwebs for help, the suggestion is that restore points could be the issue, so I disabled system protection and checked "vssadmin list shadowstorage" (run as Administrator) to see what's going on there, and it states that 0 bytes are being used for that.

So I'm at a loss and just about ready to throw Win7 out the window. I cannot believe that a fresh install + updates + Oblivion will use almost 60GB, and I cannot believe that Windows is so goddamned stupid that it cannot give me an accurate listing of how disk space is being used.

 

[Ketchup]

It could be the winsxs directory.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2795190

On the laptop I am on right now, it is report about 12 GB.

 

[Ketchup]

You should be able to remove the Patch Cache to free up some space.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com...-it-to-a-secondary-drive?forum=w7itprogeneral

 

[JoeBleed]

when you ran windows disk clean up, did you do the "Clean up system files" option?

as for the reported space, i can't find the piece i read about odd file size reporting; but it's partly to do with the winSXS directory as explained in ketchup79's link. the part about hardlinks. You may not be as out of space as it reports.

 

[Dahak]

hmmm something is fishy, as my install on win7 on my laptop, fully updated with office and other programs is total about 55GB, this is with nothing turned off.

Maybe run something like treesizeview to see what folders are taking up the space\

and just to compare to ketchup79's winsxs folder mine reads about 11gb

 

[JoeBleed]

You should be able to remove the Patch Cache to free up some space.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com...-it-to-a-secondary-drive?forum=w7itprogeneral

Interesting post. early on they didn't want you deleting any of this if i remember right.

also interesting i had to log in with my technet account to read the post.

 

[Ketchup]

Interesting post. early on they didn't want you deleting any of this if i remember right.

also interesting i had to log in with my technet account to read the post.

Possibly because you have logged into it before with that machine/web browser. I don't have an account, so I didn't get the prompt.

 

[Phynaz]

Get the new Disk Cleanup tool.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2852386/en-us#

 

[postmark]

You could disable hibernate to get some space back too.

 

[Kadarin]

Thanks guys... Some good ideas to check here. I'll report back later today with an update.

 

[sm625]

You guys might not be getting what the OP is saying. I've had drives say theres no free space left yet when I add up ALL the files and folders, including pagefile, hiberfil, winsxs, system restore, etc, everything, but it simply did not add up. I had a 320GB drive with 200GB missing somehow. I only had 90GB of crap on it yet the damn thing was full. I could never figure it out. It was just a movie/media drive so I reformatted it and just restored the movies and stuff from a backup.

 

[Kadarin]

You guys might not be getting what the OP is saying. I've had drives say theres no free space left yet when I add up ALL the files and folders, including pagefile, hiberfil, winsxs, system restore, etc, everything, but it simply did not add up. I had a 320GB drive with 200GB missing somehow. I only had 90GB of crap on it yet the damn thing was full. I could never figure it out. It was just a movie/media drive so I reformatted it and just restored the movies and stuff from a backup.

This is true. I'm dealing with a brand new Win7 install where the only software ever installed was Firefox, Oblivion, Steam, and WinRAR. It's on a 60GB partition, and when you add up the filesizes for everything it adds up to under 20GB. So about 40GB of space is used by something that I can't find. When looking this problem up on the interwebs, the answer is usually "shadow copies" caused by the creation of multiple restore points, but I've ruled that out. I've run all the disk cleanup stuff, including cleaning system files, and I've told Windows to delete all but the most recent restore point.

 

[Dahak]

hmm the only other thing that I could thing of is to run a chkdsk /f on the drive. if it is just miss reporting it, this should fix it

 

[Kadarin]

hmm the only other thing that I could thing of is to run a chkdsk /f on the drive. if it is just miss reporting it, this should fix it

Good suggestion, but sadly it wasn't that.

 

[QuietDad]

A few things. Make sure you can actually see things.
Open Folder Options by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Folder Options.

Click the View tab.

Under Advanced settings, click Show hidden files, folders, and drives, and then click OK.

Now Start/Computer. Right click on the hard drive, Select Properties and click the Previous Versions tab. That will show you any restore points you have/can delete. Look at the c:\root for pagefile.sys and scope it's size. That file defaults to 1.5x your memory.
Next look for hiberfile.sys. This is where your memory stores when you hibernate your machine. If you don't, turn off hibernation. onna have to google thayt, because I don't remember.

 

[Kadarin]

I punted. I wiped the bootcamp partition and made a new 100GB one, and reinstalled Win7. The space issue is still there, but now I actually have enough space to do stuff. Now I can play Oblivion