Storage: Help! Hard-drive space doing the disappearing and reappearing act!
- 10/9/09 1:29 PM
Empty Trash Trash/Delete Are they gone?
by celler dweller - 10/10/09 12:25 AM In reply to: Hard Drive Space Variation by ZouchGreat stuff, I've not heard most of this. Especially "Compact Folders"I use Vista mostly with Firefox & as little Int. explorer as possible through a cable provider. I have searched for every delete & empty trash command but can't find anything like "Compact Folders"? Can you help?
Thanks
Help! Hard-drive space doing the disappearing and reappearin
by gellul9 - 10/2/09 5:52 PM In reply to: Help! Hard-drive space doing the disappearing and reappearing act! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Your system restore is doing a backup. These backups use 15% of your hard drive. Every couple of days the system restore will do a backup.
disappearing-reappearing hard drive space
by Larryoke - 10/2/09 7:11 PM In reply to: Help! Hard-drive space doing the disappearing and reappearing act! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
As always when deleting files and other data from a hard rive, you are only taking one bit out of the data so that it is not seen as data as such. It is still on the hard drive and still takes up space.
Make sure you empty your recycle bin to make sure everything is gone. After deleting data, you should defrag the hard drive to make sure everything is gone(overwritten or just plain erased. The defragging also will put all your ducks in a row(ie place your files and other data in a contiguous line. This will also speed up data retrieval and make the programs running from the hard drive run better.
Either malware or HD problem
by rje49 - 10/2/09 8:02 PM In reply to: Help! Hard-drive space doing the disappearing and reappearing act! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If it were mine, I'd save all my personal files onto that 1TB external drive, then run virus/malware scans on it. Then format and re-install Vista. That would get rid of any or all malware. If the problem immediately returns, then I'd assume the HD has a problem. You might skip a potential step by simply buying a new HD first and installing an operating system on it to start. I'm no pro; that's just my way of problem-solving.
malware or drive replacement
by MOEGAMAT - 10/5/09 10:35 AM In reply to: Either malware or HD problem by rje49for sure, vista aint all that crab,so either some rootkit is slashing away gigs or the HD is failing, like i said rather just replace the HD windows 7 beta is free until march 2010, but yeah there's always a bunch of drama queens,system restore uses 15% of your HD rather far fetch i reckon
Replace disk -- I don't agree
by bdg2 - 10/9/09 4:22 PM In reply to: malware or drive replacement by MOEGAMATA hardware problem in the drive or its controller is exceedingly unlikely to cause this effect. They are not even aware the difference between space allocated to a file and unallocated space.
Not Malware at all
by deltoncbaker - 10/9/09 5:59 PM In reply to: malware or drive replacement by MOEGAMATI use Microsoft's OneCare on my laptop. At home I have USB drives, that OneCare Points to for backups. When I travel I leave the USB drives at home, this makes OneCare very objectionable until I return home. I had the same symptoms disk full errors until OneCare finished it's backup routine. After the backup was complete the USB drive was back to normal.
Hard Drive Usage
by sirpaul1 - 10/2/09 8:24 PM In reply to: Help! Hard-drive space doing the disappearing and reappearing act! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Check where your backups are being written to.
disappearing hard-drive space
by drtarr62 - 10/2/09 8:27 PM In reply to: Help! Hard-drive space doing the disappearing and reappearing act! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The fact that it's disappearing, and then reappearing makes me think that it is a swap file. Check and see what programs you've run or are running when this happens. Then try rebooting and checking it then. Also check what programs load on start up, and disabling them to save on memory load. Also check the usual ie: virus, malware, spyware. Just a few things to check out. If all else fails a stick of dynomite, and full coverage insurance works wonders. 
j/k of course.
You must have Vista
by Stillam - 10/2/09 8:35 PM In reply to: Help! Hard-drive space doing the disappearing and reappearing act! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Vista creates large--make that very large--system recovery points at least once a day. Along with system information (which allows you to recover your system to an earlier point in time), your base and then changed data is also saved in the system recovery points (that is where versions come from which allow you to recover data to an earlier point in time). So, go turn off c: system recovery which will delete all existing c: recovery points. Then turn system recovery back on. Note the increase in your available space on c:. Smile.
Hard Drive Space
by animal2k - 10/2/09 9:05 PM In reply to: Help! Hard-drive space doing the disappearing and reappearing act! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Are you using Norton by chance? I have a friend who has a laptop with XP and Norton 360. It was doing the same thing. I discovered that one of the features of Norton 360 is a backup utility. The setting was on Automatic. He was not using an external drive, so the only place that Norton could store the backup files was on the hard drive. So he had his regular stuff plus an ever-increasing set of backup files filling up the hard drive. Just a guess because I don't know what you are running.
Norton is Garbage get rid of it.
by pauly1651 - 10/4/09 7:54 AM In reply to: Hard Drive Space by animal2kNorton is garbage, get rid of it.
My experience with Norton (Symantic Systems software), is that it loves to attach its self, and use up hard drive space in a unstable, weird way that slows down, and uses up system resources. Go to Avast, or AVG anti virus, they are much less intrusive on system resources.
Been using norton's ever since I first got my computer.
by Tinkatoy4000 - 10/5/09 2:24 AM In reply to: Norton is Garbage get rid of it. by pauly1651I have been using Norton's when it first came out. The first norton's product I used was Norton System works then after that I upgraded to Norton 360 which is all in one software It works good it does not use too much of your hard drive if you know how to use it correctly and you have a good utilities program such as Tuneuputilities 2009.
Agreed!
by yetijones - 10/9/09 8:02 PM In reply to: Norton is Garbage get rid of it. by pauly1651and Norton also releases unsigned updates through your user interface (*cough* PIFTS.exe *cough cough*)
Totally agree...
by darrenforster99 - 10/10/09 12:24 AM In reply to: Norton is Garbage get rid of it. by pauly1651Totally agree with you regarding Norton being rubbish. The amount of PC's I've repaired that have been going really slow, just for one reason, Norton, and then to make it worse Norton most of the time wont even remove itself with the uninstall program, you need to get their "Norton Removal Tool" to get rid of it.
Years ago I used to like Norton as it was really good (we're going back to MS-DOS days when Peter Norton actually had some say in the program), now with Symantec at the wheel they don't seem as bothered about how much bloatware is included in the program and whether or not you can remove it or not, it's better for them if you can't 'cos then people are more likely to renew than uninstall, especially as they work out deals with laptop manufacturers to ensure their program is installed with every new laptop sold (always thought Microsoft got done for including Internet Explorer with Windows, why is Norton then allowed to include Norton Anti-virus with most laptops, and make it nearly impossible to remove, without the Norton Removal Tool).
I use ESET's Smart Security and that provides me just as much protection as Norton without the bloated extra features that I don't want or am probably never going to need, and when I uninstall it, it does exactly that.
The only time I was thankful to Norton was when my friend got Chernobyl virus on his computer (we're going back to the days of Window 98 here!) and McAfee kept removing it from his system and it kept re-installing it, Norton found it on one file that McAfee wasn't checking, there was a genuine reason why McAfee wasn't checking it but considering how bad the Chernobyl virus was to computers it was stupid to not even warn me it was in this file as it would have saved me a lot of messing around and re-scanning with McAfee over and over again to try and remove it. The file was command.com, probably the most important system file in earlier versions of Windows and MS-DOS. When I found that out all I did was boot off a floppy disk that was created on another computer, and copy command.com over, which without Norton I would never have found that virus with McAfee. But unfortunately Norton has gone down hill a lot since then.
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