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Windows XP: What’s eating up my hard drive space?
- 1/9/09 3:15 PM
What’s eating up my hard drive space?
by garry.k - 12/20/08 2:23 PM In reply to: What’s eating up my hard drive space? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The first question is who set up your computer? Did they have any idea how to do it? I sometimes see this terrible setup and it reminds me of the dark old days of Windows 3.0 when drives had to be partitioned because of limitations of partition sizes. It certainly shouldn't be done that way now. Sure you can get more efficiency because you will have smaller clusters, but it's not worth the hassle it causes when you choke your operating system in a too small partition. It wants to sometimes increase the virtual memory (uses hard drive space for it) and when it can't your whole system thrashes (constantly accessing the hard drive) and slows everything down drastically. There are sometimes other programs that will set up their own cache space on the hard drive as well. Use Partition Magic or something similar and eliminate your second partition so you can expand your OS partition. Your computer will rum much better.
Hard Space Missing
by Voiping - 12/20/08 3:37 PM In reply to: What’s eating up my hard drive space? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Three suggestions:
1) You deleted all those programs but perhaps you did not clear the recycle bin, which is also on C: drive
2) You may have deleted programs instead of using "Add/delete programs" in Control panel, which would leave a lot of program contents on your hard drive.
3) Your hard drive may not be configured properly
I would run this program called ccleaner http://www.ccleaner.com. Do a clean up of the drive under the Cleaner tab and you should discover a lot of lost disk space. I would defrag after this, also.
Whats eating up your hard drive?
by hazgeek - 12/20/08 4:42 PM In reply to: What’s eating up my hard drive space? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/make-disk-cleanup-compress-olderor-newer-files-on-xp/
This site is pretty usefull for all sorts of issues. Give it a try. Another angle to consider is the processes that are not supposed to be running from your taskbar. Check them against GOOGLE and you may be surprized.
Hazgeek
Are you running a database?
by jdspasyk - 12/20/08 6:20 PM In reply to: What’s eating up my hard drive space? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I had the same problem recently. After doing most of the things you have, I looked into my OracleXE database. Since I was no longer using this and could easily reinstall, I tried deleting it. The problem was resolved. I believe the problem manifested itself after I started powering my system down every night. I am assuming that Oracle was creating backup and recovery files, but I have not yet verified this. So perhaps you are running a database and/or powering down nightly and some application is saving it's state in rather large files. Give it some thought.
This will show you what is taking up space.
by gsinpei - 12/20/08 6:37 PM In reply to: What’s eating up my hard drive space? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Run this free program called jdiskreport which will show you everything taking up space on your drives.
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/
You will need java installed before installing jdiskreport.
Check your backups
by dtoney - 12/20/08 7:12 PM In reply to: What’s eating up my hard drive space? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Not sure if this is the same but, I had an automatic backup scheduled that was eating my HD space... check to see if you have some old backup files you can delete & set your auto backup to manual.
chasing your task bar..:)
by ikswortso - 1/10/09 5:52 AM In reply to: Check your backups by dtoneyIf you have a lot of programs on your taskbar or quick launch it might be a bit difficult to find a spot on the bar to click and drag. I find it easier to put my cursor on the clock on your taskbar ..hold your left mouse button down and drag it to which ever edge you want.
Eliminating Some Space-Grabbers
by jsaelzler - 12/20/08 7:36 PM In reply to: What’s eating up my hard drive space? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Marie—
You already took a bunch of good steps, only to find that your actions seem to have been countered by some space-grabbing fiend. If the space-grabbing happened rather quickly (within a day or two perhaps), I would start by suspecting some sort of malware.
Are your Windows patches and updates up to date? One virus I fought off at work stopped Windows and the company's antivirus program from updating themselves.
You said you ran virus and spyware scans. Just for grins, did you manually update the programs before you ran them? If you didn’t, try that and run them again. Make sure they update.
Another good action is to run the free online scan from Trend Micro (find it at:
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/apac/
One advantage of Trend Micro’s scan is that it will try to remove what it finds after the scan. Another is that it will identify some Windows updates that you might be lacking.
Now let’s assume the scans all show up negative, and you need a new direction. Let’s see whether too much space is being reserved for things you don’t need to save. There are two areas I would look at.
The first is your Internet cache. If you are using Internet Explorer, click on Tools | Internet Options. Here the steps get a little different depending on which version you’re using, but somewhere on the General tab should be a Settings button that leads to a place where you can adjust the size of your Internet cache. Knock it down to 50 or 100 MB, especially if it’s set a lot larger than that.
Step two is to right click on the Recycle Bin icon and click on Properties. On the Global tab is a slider bar that adjusts how much disk space is available for recycling. Make sure it’s no more than 5%.
Still got a problem? Here are a couple free utility programs that include several components (including some temporary file finders that are pretty aggressive and registry cleaners that seem pretty good) One, called Advanced SystemCare, is at:
http://www.iobit.com/advancedwindowscareper.html
And the other, Glary Utilities, is at:
http://www.download.com/Glary-Utilities/3000-2094_4-10508531.html
Running those two utilities should speed up your system a smidge as well as identifying more potential problems and space-wasting temporary files.
Good hunting!
thank you Lee Koo
by catlady9tails - 1/10/09 12:44 PM In reply to: Eliminating Some Space-Grabbers by jsaelzlerI downloaded the 2 things you suggested and they worked . thank you marge
Hard Drive Defraging problem
by pdhir - 1/12/09 2:44 AM In reply to: Eliminating Some Space-Grabbers by jsaelzlerI tried to defrag my hard drive but it would not do that. It did start and after a few minutes, I get the message that the following files can't be defraged. Then I ran the analysis again - the message is that I MUST defrag the volume C:\. I wonder how can I defrag when it will not run the whole process. Thanks.
Hard Drive-Defragmentation problem
by pdhir - 1/12/09 2:50 AM In reply to: Eliminating Some Space-Grabbers by jsaelzlerI tried to defrag my hard drive but the process ran for a while and at the end it said that some files could not be defraged. I ran the analysis on the hard drive and it says that I must defrag my volume C:\. My question is as to how I can defrag when it will not do it. I rum windows xp and I have Toshiba laptop. Please send me an email at pdhir@hotmail.com as I may miss the posting.
When I ask for details, the following appears.
Fragments File Size Files that cannot be defragmented
2,429 9 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\1bd070c.msp
384 9 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\14ddcbd.msp
384 10 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\14ddcd1.msp
393 10 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\2fd02c7.msp
570 11 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\14ddcc5.msp
452 11 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\2fd02bb.msp
912 12 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\446222.msp
606 12 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\1bd0718.msp
397 12 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\2c0fd96.msp
472 16 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\812519.msp
518 16 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\1270c3e.msp
461 16 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\14ddcc1.msp
453 16 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\2fd02b7.msp
871 31 MB \Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\VirusDefs\20090111.004\VIRSCAN7.DAT
565 31 MB \Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\VirusDefs\BinHub\virscan7.dat
414 33 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{85BD2043-3A64-479B-ABB4-B83390286164}\RP795\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
384 33 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{85BD2043-3A64-479B-ABB4-B83390286164}\RP793\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
526 33 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{85BD2043-3A64-479B-ABB4-B83390286164}\RP794\snapshot\_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
440 36 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\1bd0708.msp
1,208 36 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\14ddcb9.msp
915 36 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\2fd02af.msp
1,518 114 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\1270c22.msp
5,489 114 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\2c0fd72.msp
1,821 114 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\2b7b181.msp
517 114 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\41af3.msp
448 114 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\5f3055.msp
433 114 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\14e3a0.msp
582 114 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\51a644.msp
441 114 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\908ca.msp
2,218 139 MB \WINDOWS\Installer\MSI397.tmp
Dibernation eating up hard drive??
by blom2 - 12/20/08 9:06 PM In reply to: What’s eating up my hard drive space? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
One thing you mite try is to stop hibernation, then defrag the hard drive. as hibernation will save to the hard drive each time, and the file is not removed until it is turned off.
same problem
by jan-hendrik v j - 12/20/08 10:40 PM In reply to: What’s eating up my hard drive space? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I'm experiencing the same problem !
please help ! ?
Some very good ideas have already been posted.
by PsychGen - 12/21/08 7:11 AM In reply to: same problem by jan-hendrik v jI would hope to think that by the time we got to 91 posts that we would start to see "I had a similar problem. I tried the suggestions in posts 5, 8 and 15, and everything is back to normal." or, "tried everything suggested still no change."
Instead we still get pleas for help.
Does anybody ever read the responses?
Working on the "System Volume Information" Folder
by brunodc - 1/10/09 1:46 PM In reply to: Some very good ideas have already been posted. by PsychGenHi Guys
I was facing the same problem last week and found an different solution. Some facts in my particular case and the solution I used:
- Your system has to show hidden and system files on the File explorer (highlight it on "Options")
My free space on the Windows Partition G: was less than 12 Gb, on a 80 Gb drive.
- System Volume Information is a hidden System Folder you have on each Hard Drive (in my case on C:, G; and H).
- I have an application "Folder Size" instaled on my system, which gives you the size of files and folders directly on the file explorer (normally you have no idea of the folder sizes unless you click on "Properties"). On G: it was informing this particular folder as containing 116 Gb (on a 80Mb drive!!). I tried to click on it to open but I was not allowed (it is "reserved for the system").
- Highlighting the file and obtaining its size through "Properties": 0 (zero) bytes. OK, Microsoft does not want me to know what is inside: that is the folder I have to work on. (The difference of "Folder Size" reported size and the existing on the drive was probably related to campacting the files in the misterious folder.)
- Googling the "System Volume Information" term made me find a solution for how to reach inside this folder: Clicking "My Computer" on desktop > Highlighting the mentioned folder > Rightclicking on it > Clicking on "Sharing and security" > Security Tab: the only authorized server show as being the "System". Add your user also as an authorized user on this folder.
- Now you can explore the folder and will find out it contains a series of folders and files related to restore points. Some of them are bigger than 1 Gb. On my system they also appear in blue (instead of black), confirming they have been compacted by the system to fullfill my "12% of drive space" specification.
- Sort them according to "date" and delete the older ones (in my case there was even 2006 stuff). Do not forget to hold "shift" before "Del" so your system does not try to move 1 Gb files to the Recycle Bin. I just maintained the ones related to December 2008 and newer)
And so I retrieved more than 30 Gb from my drive and the computer now runs as fast as it was in 2006.
No other solution helped in the same ammount of space (the % slider, CCleaner, etc etc).
I hope you enjoy this. Is this the hidden bomb prepared by the software company to slow all computers and induce us to always move to an newer one? (or reformating it from zero as many of my friends do each 6 months). Remember each Automatic Update generates a new restoration point. This drains space from your system every time and finnaly results in the problem originally asked.
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