My C: Drive Keeps On Filling Up

[astral]

I am getting a little icon a the bottom of the screen warning me of low disk space on the C: drive.

Emptying the Recovery Bin cures the problem and frees up 3-4Gb of space,

but why is it happening in the first place?

[lopburi3]

How much free space do you normally have on the drive? How large a drive is it? Do you store unfinished items on C drive perhaps? Most storage/programs and everything else defaults to C unless you make other arrangements.

[Namphonny]

You might have a look at System Restore. If you have allocated a large amount of space eg 12% it can get filled up if there are a lot of restore points and you only really need one.

[geoffphuket]

So Santa didn't bring you a 2Tb HD eh?

Sorry, couldn't resist

[Pib]

Use the Windows File Manager/Explorer to look at your C Drive (or whatever drive letter it is). Select My Computer, then the drive in question, then "right" click, the select Properties which will show a pie chart of Used and Free space. Although hard driver have got bigger and bigger, it seems like we all store more and more. Hopefully you don't have a virus which as filled up the drive with crap.

[garyh]

System restore can take a lot of space, use the advanced part of the system cleanup to get rid of them.

[newtronbom]

If you don't have a D: drive, which you should store "all" your sys recovery/backup files on, I would say follow the post to go advanced properties on system backup/ restore point, then delete most of the "OLD" sys images and restore points - do a system restore today, just in case you make some mistake. I have 500 GBs on my D: drive, of which I am using only around 80 GBs for my "important files" and I need to delete my old backup and recovery file regular, or they will fill up the drive in just 2 weeks!

Edited December 26, 2009 by newtronbom

[newtronbom]

This is what I gained after a tidy up. Still uses a lot of room, but all depends on your settings - ie. safety!

[seanocasey]

System restore can take up a lot of space.

There are some viruses that also fill your hard drive.

What happens when you go to disk cleanup? Any large amount of "stuff" in any of the categories?

make sure your viewing hidden and system files and look in the root directory of C:/

I had a similar problem and found that it was my antivirus program kept creating a 6Gb dat file in the root !! It wasnt a virus (It was AVG Antivirus software

if anyones interested). So I uninstalled and replaced with diff AV software. Fixed it

By the way, your pagefile is in the root too.. dont mix anything up with that. Its a big file but not 'that' big!!

[bendejo]

Are you running Vista?

If so, upgrade to Win7.

I went from 20+ Gb on Vista to around 10Gb on Win7, after installing all my apps.

If you're already in Win7, here's some subjects to research that could be hogging your disk space; rather than dictate what you should set things to, spend a few minutes reading up on each and figure what is best for you:

restore points

hibernation

swap space

[welo]

Seems that everybody is following this thread but the OP

[PoorSucker]

Use SHIFT-DEL when removing files.

That way they don't go to the recycle bin.

[astral]

Seems that everybody is following this thread but the OP

Not totally true. I am around and the System Restore does seem to be a major candidate.

I cleared all by the latest restore and freed up quite a bit of space.

Is there any way to tell Windows (XP, by the way) to only keep the last 2 or maybe 3 restore points?

I have only started running Restore recently, about 2 months, after a major problem with a Windows Update,

that screwed my machine.

Fortunately I had an Acronis Image that got me out of trouble.

Thanks for all your help guys, and gals.

[torrenova]

I put in a new 1TB HD and have left the 500GB which came with the PC to just handle programs and all that sort of stuff whilst everything I want is on the new drive.

[Cuban]

Is there any way to tell Windows (XP, by the way) to only keep the last 2 or maybe 3 restore points?

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: Yes, there is a setting accessible via the Control Panel that allows you to limit the total amount of disk space that System Restore will use to keep previous restore points. I recall that it is a simple slider bar control that allows you to set it as a percentage of the total disk space on the drive where the OS is installed. By some trial and error you could adjust the amount of space available to System Restore so that only 2-3 points are retained and older ones are over written as time goes on.

HTH

[katana]

You might consider disabling System Restore and installing ERUNT instead which works a lot like Win 9x and makes a daily back-up of the registry.

[welo]

By some trial and error you could adjust the amount of space available to System Restore so that only 2-3 points are retained and older ones are over written as time goes on.

System Restore Points are incremental, meaning each System Restore Point only 'contains' changes that have been made since the last Restore Point. I further assume that System Restore only uses significant space for changes that delete files (or update files since the old copy has to be retained), not for adding files to the disk. That said I admit to not knowing exactly how (well) it is implemented.

However, in your case the concept of limiting the amount of disk space that System Restore uses should be exactly what you need.

From my experience System Restore is not 100% reliable, especially when it comes to virus infections since they love to hide in and mess with System Restore. Interestingly, to clean up virus infections, you will often be instructed to turn off System Restore and restart Windows in order to wipe any malicious files in System Restore.

System Restore works well in situations where you mess up your system due to software or driver installs, or other configuration issues.

For disaster recovery I recommend system imaging software, Acronis is one you already mentioned. Interestingly Windows 7 introduces a complete system image as additional option for system recovery.

So if you have a system image for disaster recovery I recommend to turn off System Restore and restart Windows. This way you will have a 'fresh start' with System Restore.

Btw System Restore should not fill up that quickly if you don't install software frequently. Any data (documents, images, etc) are excluded from System Restore by definition and should not affect space requirements. If it is really System Restore that fills your harddrive so quickly I would have a closer look on what is going on there. .

Reading your first post again it seems that your problem is rather NOT related to System Restore. Emptying the recycle bin is not related to System Restore AFAIK. System Restore data that becomes deprecated due to your configured size limit does not get moved to the bin.

The recycle bin is only filled by files that are deleted by the user (not sure about automated file deletions by other applications). You can always check what's inside your bin before emptying it.

You might also want to check out ccleaner, a free tool that empties several locations that hold temporary files (IE, Firefox, trash bin, etc) at once.

welo

welo

[astral]

Thanks for the tip on ERUNT.

Installed and set to run daily.

Also set to use a different drive, not C: