30 Gig Hard Drive Full Yet Only 5 Gign It

[H2oDunc]

Hi all, I have a little mystery which is puzzling and doing my head in as well, second one this week. My C drive is 30GB and with now 800Mb free space but recently it is showing red and saying it is low on disc space a few times. Ive deleted all the stuff I dont use but its still showing red. Now here's the riddle. In C I have the following folders

Y Server with 156kb

Users with 86Mb

Program Data with 61Mb

Program files with 3.1Gb

Performance logs with 12.3Mb

Nvidia with 180Mb

Downloads with 711Mb

Now I get that to be around the 5 Gig mark ? So whats taking up the rest of the drive ????? Ive gone to folder options and ticked show hidden files a well. I've just run check disk and it found all ok and I'm running Nod 32 fully up dated. Im at a loss so any helpwould be appreciated. Maybe Im working the figures out wrong ? Cheers in advance.

[malcolmswaine]

I couldn't be sure without looking at the machine, but here are the first two things i'd do.

1) Search the entire drive for files with a size > 250 MB ensuring that the "search hidden files and folders" option is checked

2) Take a look at the disk management snap in (right click My Computer on the desktop, and from the resulting context menu choose Manage. Select the node Disk Management under Storage). Check the disk size and partitioning information.

Hope that helps,

M

Edited December 23, 2008 by malcolmswaine

[H2oDunc]

Malcolm, I'm running Vista ultimate so when I right click the drive there is no option you say ? I did a search for files above 250and only got 1 zipped file. Cheers for the tips though

[britmaveric]

Right Click my computer -

select manage -

select disk management

This will show how much is being used on said drive.

[Guest Reimar]

In Windows Explorer click on Organize ->Folder and Search Options ->View and check Show Hidden Files and Folders and un-check Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)!

That should show you ALL available files and you'll find there a lot files from previous deleted programs as well. Maybe you'll need to take the Ownership of that files you want to delete. To do that you need to Right Click on that file and choose Properties ->Security ->Advanced ->Owner and start from there to take the Ownership. But even after that you can not delete all files, some are still protected.

Hope that helps a bit.

Cheers.

[astral]

Have you emptied the Recycle Bin?

That can tie up space.

[H2oDunc]

Hi I've done all of the above but still I can only see about 5 Gig in any of the folders on C. If I right click and pick properties it shows C as 29 Gig with 803 Mb free. Iv'e attached a snip from C properties. Iv'e run system clean up and deleted everything I don't use yet its still showing nearly full.

[Guest Reimar]

So, and how big is your hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys? And how big is your Windows Directory? That 3 use on my system as little as 23 GBytes! Vista Ultimate by the way!

Cheers.

[endure]

Download and install Treesize. It will give you full info on what's on your disk. It's free:

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

[malcolmswaine]

I did a search for files above 250and only got 1 zipped file.

If thats the case then you must be missing something. As Reimar points out, one would expect that you would at least have a pagefile.sys of some size - definately over 250MB. Is this the only disk on the machine?

Are you sure you're searching from your root c: and you've definitely got the option to show hidden files and folders set?

M

[Gary A]

If I were to guess, I'd guess it has a Windows unreadable Linux partition on the drive.

[JetsetBkk]

Download and install Treesize. It will give you full info on what's on your disk. It's free:

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

Hmm - looks nice. I use Foldersize, but I'll have a look at TreeSize in case it's less disk intensive. Foldersize can rattle away on the disk for quite a time.

[2008bangkok]

Malcolm, I'm running Vista ultimate so when I right click the drive there is no option you say ? I did a search for files above 250and only got 1 zipped file. Cheers for the tips though

Say no more..my vista buisness is 20 gb just for install..try seeing the size of the windows directory and add that into your calculations

[JetsetBkk]

Do you have System Restore monitoring your C: drive? (You should! )

It can use up about 4 GB on a 30 GB drive.

To check: right click on My Computer, select: Properties, then System Restore tab.

Select "C: drive", click "Settings" and check how much disk space is used.

Try dragging the slider to the left to reduce the number of restore points maintained, and the amount of disk space used.

I have about 1 GB used for restore points.

[H2oDunc]

Jetset When I right click my computer I doi not get the restore option just the information page as seen belw. I did manage to get a lot of space back as Vista makes shaow copies of files and I had several and since deleting them Ive gained a lot of space. Cheers all for the help

[JetsetBkk]

Jetset When I right click my computer I doi not get the restore option just the information page as seen belw. I did manage to get a lot of space back as Vista makes shaow copies of files and I had several and since deleting them Ive gained a lot of space. Cheers all for the help

Ah, Vista! (Suddenly got a yearning for gravy... )

It's so easy in XP:

Just drag the slider ^ to change the amount of disk space that can be used for Restore Points.

[A_Traveller]

^ There's no equivalent in Vista. Believe it or not the only way I found [there may be others] is to switch restore off, then re enable it so it then reviews how much disk space it has to work with [not the whole disk as original install].

Regards

[IMA_FARANG]

Hi all, I have a little mystery which is puzzling and doing my head in as well, second one this week. My C drive is 30GB and with now 800Mb free space but recently it is showing red and saying it is low on disc space a few times. Ive deleted all the stuff I dont use but its still showing red. Now here's the riddle. In C I have the following folders

Y Server with 156kb

Users with 86Mb

Program Data with 61Mb

Program files with 3.1Gb

Performance logs with 12.3Mb

Nvidia with 180Mb

Downloads with 711Mb

Now I get that to be around the 5 Gig mark ? So whats taking up the rest of the drive ????? Ive gone to folder options and ticked show hidden files a well. I've just run check disk and it found all ok and I'm running Nod 32 fully up dated. Im at a loss so any helpwould be appreciated. Maybe Im working the figures out wrong ? Cheers in advance.

Did you purchase this drive from the manufactuer with the computer or as an add on? I strongly suspect that you have a used system with a non MSDOS partition on it that contains some other type of file system (someone on here mentioned Linux) You say though that chkdsk shows the full 30 Gigs capacity? Is that right?

There are a number of disk partition utilities that will look closely at a drive, getting down "under the DOS" so to speak. I'm not sure if a program called Partition Master is still around...I used that quite a few years ago. I imagine if you looked on the net, you could find a number of utilities to look at and repartition your drive if it is needed. But be careful with those,you need to know what you are doing, or you can seriously mess up your drive.

The very first computer I owned came with a 40 mb drive. That was considered a huge drive at the time. I was only able to access 20 mb...until I went in and did a low level reformat of the drive which found me the 'missing' 20 megs. Of course, I had to remove the operatiing system and reinstall it afterward. I wouldn't think of doing that with a 30 gig system.

If you ever get into that 'hidden" space it might be interesting to see what is there. But I would delete it all if it is possible to get into it...you never know what may be on there. Hopefully only Porn.

[JetsetBkk]

^ There's no equivalent in Vista. Believe it or not the only way I found [there may be others] is to switch restore off, then re enable it so it then reviews how much disk space it has to work with [not the whole disk as original install].

Regards

What a silly O/S! So you have to lose all your restore points if you want to adjust the amount downwards. Why do M$ do things like this?

[fabianfred]

also don't forget that if you haven't emptied it....your Temporary internet files from Internet Explorer will be full of rubbish

[wpcoe]

I think Reimar and others have hit the nail on the head as to where your "missing" GBs are on the hard drive: i.e. PageFile, hybernation files, System Protection files, C:\Windows directory, etc.

To "protect" you, by default Microsoft "hides" system and operating files. To see (almost) everything on your C:\ partition, go to Control Panel > Folder Options, and click on the View tab. For "Hidden files and folders" chose the radio button for "Show hidden files and folders" and UNcheck "Hide protected operating system files," then close Folder Options and click on My computer again and see all the wonderful stuff on C:\ that was hidden before.

[JetsetBkk]

...go to Control Panel > Folder Options, and click on the View tab. For "Hidden files and folders" chose the radio button for "Show hidden files and folders" and UNcheck "Hide protected operating system files," then close Folder Options and click on My computer again and see all the wonderful stuff on C:\ that was hidden before.

* bump *

He said earlier that he'd done that.

Have you H2oDunc?

[dave9988]

dude 30gb is nothing go and get a 500 gb external hard drive at the electronics mall

most pc video games need like 5-8gb alone

[dave9988]

some progs or games require-need more space then they actually take up

[Kf6vci]

Not sure, but you should do a few things. Run CC cleaner after every internet session with all browsers closed.

Tick every box and run the Registry search as well.

Try system restore to an earlier time.

A few years ago, i noticed that XP would actually use more space every time I tried to delete some file, like a Word document. Go figure.

www.majorgeeks.com has some nice programs like RegCleaner (basic but effective) and if all fails, I would reinstall Windows.

Modern games can add GB to your HDD. Get rid of all you do not need!

[Obiwan]

If you didn't already, run the disk defragmenter. A bad hard drive can get terribly defragmented which results in loose fragments/empty files taking up lots of space.