75 GB of space mysteriously full...

[Icewalker]

My computer is missing a huge amount of space that it is supposed to have, and which shouldn't be full, but is. It's really really bothering me.

From My Computer, it puts the C drive at: 12.6 GB free out of 137 GB. The contents of the C drive (if you open it right there and look inside):
DRIVERS (7.54 MB)
epson (18.4 MB)
EPSONREG(1.61 MB)
Icons (1.64 KB)
Intel (531 KB)
mfg (256 KB)
PerfLogs (file is empty)
Program Files (25.7 GB)
SWShare (524 KB)
SWTOOLS (2.34 GB)
Users (15.2 GB)
Windows (5.7 GB)

As you can see this totals about...47 GB. It says I have 120+ taken up. Where the hell are my remaining 75? :smallmad:

It's really starting to be a problem. What else could be taking up this space, and how can I fix it?

It's a relatively new computer, several months old, Lenovo, running Windows Vista, which I haven't had any trouble with (it's perfectly functional. I know all the crap about it, I doubt this event is it's fault, so unless you have evidence or precedent don't just say "Oh, it's Vista :smalltongue: ".)

[Tharivol123]

It could be vista. I had a similar issue with my laptop. Check if there are any other user accounts on the computer. Even if you don't use them yourself, most new computers with vista come with 2-3 already setup.

[Vaynor]

This (http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/) program assesses your computers hard drive and tells you where and how big your files are, and which ones take up the most space. Takes a bit to run, but it's worth it.

[Crispy Dave]

This (http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/) program assesses your computers hard drive and tells you where and how big your files are, and which ones take up the most space. Takes a bit to run, but it's worth it.

I fully support this plan

[Eldan]

I also have a Lenovo with Windows Vista, and pretty much the same problem. Even these disk-space analyzers don't show where the space went: I've gotten reports like: Space Full: 40GP, Space Empty: 10GP, Total Space: 120GB

Edit:
Yeah, just did it with the linked program: Total 34.1 GB total shown by the program. 12.1GB empty, Disc size 120GB shown by the computer itself.

[SMEE]

Might be system restore files.

Right click the disk and choose properties.
Then click disk clean up.

[Icewalker]

Looking into disc cleanup now. Let's see what it says...

...Well, it says it can free up 3 GB of space. So, no.

Multiple completely unused user accounts isn't going to take up an extra 75 gb...just a couple. And I'm pretty sure this is the only account on this computer.

[SMEE]

Click at the more options tab and click the button on the System restore and shadow copies group.

[Icewalker]

Just to be sure, what does this do, exactly? 'removing all but the most recent restore point' sounds rather ominous.

[SMEE]

It removes system restore points, which are images of the windows folder and registry at a certain point of the time.

Usually you don't need to use it, unless you install a program that suddenly screws up badly with your windows.
And even at that point, a restore point is created prior to the installation of such program.

So... pretty much dead weight.

[Icewalker]

Alright then, trying it now.

Well, it helped. Freed up another 16 GB.

[Crispy Dave]

Another good cleanup program is cc cleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/)

[SMEE]

Good. Now go to control panel, system and maintenance, system, advanced.

Then click the user profile buttons. See if there's any other profile at the machine and how much space it's taking.
If there's more than one, delete the others.

[Icewalker]

There's a 'Users' folder in the C drive, just has mine at 14 GB and 'public' at 500 MB.

[littlequietguy]

I know very little about this subject but this (http://www.brettbits.com/Text/MissingHardDriveSpace/) might help.

[Yarram]

Have you gone through all of your temporary files and deleted those?

The problem with Vista and XP is they keep making all of these redundant .dll files that they never delete. Because of this you really need to backup and reinstall your OS every 6 months or so.

[Renegade Paladin]

I know very little about this subject but this (http://www.brettbits.com/Text/MissingHardDriveSpace/) might help.
It's pretty clear he's not talking about the decimal GB/binary GB discrepancy, as he's talking about a difference between what Windows reports the capacity as and the sum capacity of everything on the drive, not the difference between what Windows reports and what the manufacturer states.

[purple gelatinous cube o' Doom]

I'd make sure it's not a virus. I've known of viruses to do that sort of thing before.

[Icewalker]

Have you gone through all of your temporary files and deleted those?

The problem with Vista and XP is they keep making all of these redundant .dll files that they never delete. Because of this you really need to backup and reinstall your OS every 6 months or so.

But would that really total up to more than twice the real material I have on the computer?

[Kobold_Love]

<.< Is there a porn folder you might not have mentioned? >.>

[Renegade Paladin]

If there were, he'd probably know about it and have not asked the question. :smallamused:

[KuReshtin]

I know that Lenovo's/IBM's Rescue and Recovery application has a tendency to go into automatic backup mode for the scheduler and take backups once a week as a default. It also save the backups it takes to the actual hard drive (one of the stupidest things I know, to be honest) and that the backups aren't seen in any disk checker tools.

I'm not at work at the moment (since it's 1am) so I don't have the correct instructions here at the moment, but you should be able to find a listing of the backups in Rescue and Recovery if you go into the application.

To check that, open the Rescue and Recovery application from the Start menu -> Programs -> ThinkVantage -> Rescue and Recovery
In one of the menus, you will find an option that says "Show backups" or something similar to that.
There will be a list of backups (I think the default is one Base backup that will be huge and 3 Incremental backups that wil be relatively small)
Removing those backups, you should be able to free up a great deal of disk space.
If you remove the Base backup, the Incremental backups won't be of any use, so delete them as well.

After you've done this, go into the schedular part of the application and turn off the automatic backup schedule.
That way, you have control over when you take the backups, and where you save them to. I would recommend an external hard drive.

[Icewalker]

Yeah, I already keep an external hard drive which I put the few files that I really want to keep on, refreshing it every once in a while manually...I'll go check the lenovo backups now.

Alright, well I found it, and it's 40 GB. Unfortunately, I can't delete it directly through this program... :smallsigh: need to look for it...

And, can't find it...

[Flame of Anor]

<.<

>.>

*psst!*

it must be SecuROM! it's gained a foothold and it's multiplying! you need to call Tom Bombadil, because he's the only one who can delete it for realz!

*runs off*

*hides from SecuROM*

[Yarram]

But would that really total up to more than twice the real material I have on the computer?

Unlikely, but perhaps. And considering you've been able to clean up a bunch of files anyway, it's not implausible. I've had 15Gb of temporary files before on XP and though I've never used it, I've been told that Vista is worse when it comes to temporary files.

EDIT: There are also a bunch of windows files that can't be changed except when in DoS. I forget which ones they are. You could also have a worm that runs before your OS which would mean it's pretty much impossible to get rid of unless you know which worm, or you reinstall your OS.

[Icewalker]

Seeing as I just found this backup which makes up somewhere between half and 2/3rds of the missing space, I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of it was these temp files. Where can I find them?

Note: have yet to figure out a way to delete the 40 GB backup it saved. Any ideas there? Couldn't find any delete backup button in the rescue and recovery thing, just a view all backups button.

[alchemyprime]

Look for a program called CLone Spy. I use it to clean up my documents, because sometimes I either A) open the same torrent twice, 2) download multiple cbz or cbr files from different torrents, or C/3/-) downloaded the same book/song/saved two copies of a story I wrote. It doesn't seem like much, but with what I do... I once cleaned up around 50 gigs of stuff from my pictures alone, 20 from music and around 55 from my documents. 125 gigs or so in all. Yeah. :smallredface: I'm bad...

[KuReshtin]

Right, I'm in at work now, and I've had a look at what needs to be done.

- Open Rescue and Recovery
- Choose the Advanced mode
- You'll then get the menus at the top and a few extra buttons on the main screen.
- In the 'Advanced' Menu, you should have an option that says 'Delete Backups'

When you choose that, you'll get one of those lists of backups on the machine, and just select and delete.
That should free up a ton of space.

[Eldan]

Thanks a lot for that one... I had heard it might be backups, but I wasn't aware R&R made it's own and always only used the normal systems restore and shadow copies option in the normal disc clean up utility.
I'll have to try that when I get home. 40GB of disc space would be very, very nice, I've been trying to get some free space for ages.

[KuReshtin]

Thanks a lot for that one... I had heard it might be backups, but I wasn't aware R&R made it's own and always only used the normal systems restore and shadow copies option in the normal disc clean up utility.
I'll have to try that when I get home. 40GB of disc space would be very, very nice, I've been trying to get some free space for ages.

Like I said, it's one of the more retarded 'features' of the R&R application that it defaults to start taking backups, and defaults to saving them to the main HDD.

Be sure to go into the scheduler after you've removed the backups and set it up so that it doesn't save any backups to the main hard drive.
Or better yet, don't set the scheduler at all, just set a reminder to yourself every now and then to run the backup manually.

[Eldan]

Yeah, I have a 1000GB external drive, so that's not actually a problem. I'll just make backups there. The annoying thing is that my system slows down because I have no free space on my main disk.

[Icewalker]

Alright! Deleted it and turned off scheduled backups. Got 74 GB of free space now, so getting much better. Where can I find this pile of temporary .dll files which was mentioned?

[SMEE]

If you have your Windows Vista updated with the latest patches, it already took care of it for you when you did the disk clean up.

[Trixie]

The problem with Vista and XP is they keep making all of these redundant .dll files that they never delete. Because of this you really need to backup and reinstall your OS every 6 months or so.

[Facepalms] I wonder how long that myth is going to persist. Seriously, people, days of Windows 95 are gone. It's perfectly possible to have 4+ year old system running good as new (in fact, one on my net machine is about that old), as long as you know what you're doing.

And saying the same thing about new OS you admitted you never used is plainly ridiculous. Same with the guy suggesting disc-space-eating viruses. Sorry, but M$ hate is so last millennium.

Ahem, anyway. The advice in this thread was pretty sound, that is, about restore points, temp files and backups, but I wonder why no one started with basics - making hidden files visible (first thing to do when dealing with invisible stuff, assuming it wasn't already turned off) and regulating your swap files. Backups should be touched last in such a situation, they have a good reason to be there.

[Eldan]

Seems I have several medium-sized backups instead of one large one:
14GB; 11GB; 12GB, 8GB; 0.5GB, 6GB.

Deleted half of them for now, and it helped a lot.
So, thanks to anyone involved.

[Eldan]

Is it normal that deleting these files has taken nearly two hours so far, with no sign of stopping?

[Trixie]

No.

Better start praying :smallamused:

(Well, I'd try to reset your computer, then try to see if everything works properly, and unless you really need that space or unless you know what you're doing I wouldn't touch these files until there is need for space, again. Oh, and make backups, if you can, just in case.)

[KuReshtin]

Ahem, anyway. The advice in this thread was pretty sound, that is, about restore points, temp files and backups, but I wonder why no one started with basics - making hidden files visible (first thing to do when dealing with invisible stuff, assuming it wasn't already turned off) and regulating your swap files. Backups should be touched last in such a situation, they have a good reason to be there.

True that backups have a good reason to be there, however the question was asked where the disk space went, and since the R&R backup scheduler is a very common problem popping up for me at work (I actually work at the Lenovo/IBM laptop support) that's the first thing that springs to mind when disk space "disappears". It was then mentioned that backups had been made onto an external drive, at which point the backups on the internal drive can be discarded.


I totally agree that some of the 'advice' given is somewhat useless, though.
I just figured that I'd refrain from saying so, and give some advice that could actually help. :smallcool:

[Trixie]

True that backups have a good reason to be there, however the question was asked where the disk space went, and since the R&R backup scheduler is a very common problem popping up for me at work (I actually work at the Lenovo/IBM laptop support) that's the first thing that springs to mind when disk space "disappears". It was then mentioned that backups had been made onto an external drive, at which point the backups on the internal drive can be discarded.

I totally agree that some of the 'advice' given is somewhat useless, though.
I just figured that I'd refrain from saying so, and give some advice that could actually help. :smallcool:

Well, I never had IBM laptop, so you're probably right. Still, it's one of these things that are someone's else's fault, yet M$ is being bashed for it and/or assumed responsible.

As for the second - well, actually the advice is good, but anyone who can use it probably already can do these things, and people who don't know these might damage their hardware without very detailed instructions (and these, frankly, weren't) - things tend to be different even among the various subversions of Windows, not to mention versions.

[Kcalehc]

Open 'Computer'. Hit alt key, goto Tools menu --> Folder Options. Click View Tab. Check box that says "Show Hidden Files and Folders".

Then go look again at the sizes of all your directories. Numbers should start getting a little closer.

Go to Control Panel, Add/Remove programs and kill stuff you don't use (unless you're really unsure of what it is then leave it just in case).

DeFragging couldn't hurt either after a disk cleanup. If you;ve been adding and removing a lot you'll lose some space from simply how the computer writes to the disk.

[Eldan]

It's not really a case of me not knowing enough about computers, I usually get along. I just didn't know that Rescue & Recovery files didn't show up unless you went in there to check. I mean, I knew that these files were around, it just never occured to me that they made up the difference.

[The Dark Fiddler]

I know next to nothing on the subject, and it seems to be all but solved, but uh... defrag?