Cannot reduce disk space

[Anthony Fontana]

We have a user with an older computer. It has only 20Gb hard disk (C. I
want to set her up on another computer. On her current computer, she has a
second hard disk of 120 GB but that is a separate drive (E. E: is not a
mounted disk onto C:. I moved her paging file to the E: drive.

She has filled up the C: drive (99%). I am trying to remove some stuff
(pictures and music) from the C: drive by moving it over to the E: drive
(lots of free space). I do it with a copy, then delete, removing the deleted
files from the recycle bin.

No matter what I move, I cannot get the used disk space to lower.

Could this be compressed files that the system is automatically uncompressing.

What else could be causing this?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

We have a user with an older computer. It has only 20Gb hard disk
(C. I want to set her up on another computer. On her current
computer, she has a second hard disk of 120 GB but that is a
separate drive (E. E: is not a mounted disk onto C:. I moved
her paging file to the E: drive.

She has filled up the C: drive (99%). I am trying to remove some
stuff (pictures and music) from the C: drive by moving it over to
the E: drive (lots of free space). I do it with a copy, then
delete, removing the deleted files from the recycle bin.

No matter what I move, I cannot get the used disk space to lower.

Could this be compressed files that the system is automatically
uncompressing.

What else could be causing this?

If she's using 20GB with Windows XP and doesn't have every product AutoDesk
makes, all the Microsoft Office suites and all products Adobe makes
installed on it - along with many other programs - it's *her* stuff.

Otherwise...

If you are comfortable with the stability of your system, you can delete the
uninstall files for the patches that Windows XP has installed...
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/spack.htm
( Particularly of interest here - #4 )
( Alternative: http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_hotfix_backup.htm )

You can run Disk Cleanup - built into Windows XP - to erase all but your
latest restore point and cleanup even more "loose files"..

How to use Disk Cleanup
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312

You can turn off hibernation if it is on and you don't use it..

When you hibernate your computer, Windows saves the contents of the system's
memory to the hiberfil.sys file. As a result, the size of the hiberfil.sys
file will always equal the amount of physical memory in your system. If you
don't use the hibernate feature and want to recapture the space that Windows
uses for the hiberfil.sys file, perform the following steps:

- Start the Control Panel Power Options applet (go to Start, Settings,
Control Panel, and click Power Options).
- Select the Hibernate tab, clear the "Enable hibernation" check box, then
click OK; although you might think otherwise, selecting Never under the
"System hibernates" option on the Power Schemes tab doesn't delete the
hiberfil.sys file.
- Windows will remove the "System hibernates" option from the Power Schemes
tab and delete the hiberfil.sys file.

You can control how much space your System Restore can use...

1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the System Restore tab.
3. Highlight one of your drives (or C: if you only have one) and click on
the "Settings" button.
4. Change the percentage of disk space you wish to allow.. I suggest moving
the slider until you have just about 1GB (1024MB or close to that...)
5. Click OK.. Then Click OK again.

You can control how much space your Temporary Internet Files can utilize...

Empty your Temporary Internet Files and shrink the size it stores to a
size between 64MB and 128MB..

- Open ONE copy of Internet Explorer.
- Select TOOLS -> Internet Options.
- Under the General tab in the "Temporary Internet Files" section, do the
following:
- Click on "Delete Cookies" (click OK)
- Click on "Settings" and change the "Amount of disk space to use:" to
something between 64MB and 128MB. (It may be MUCH larger right
now.)
- Click OK.
- Click on "Delete Files" and select to "Delete all offline contents"
(the checkbox) and click OK. (If you had a LOT, this could take 2-10
minutes or more.)
- Once it is done, click OK, close Internet Explorer, re-open Internet
Explorer.

You can use an application that scans your system for log files and
temporary files and use that to get rid of those:

Ccleaner (Free!)
http://www.ccleaner.com/

Other ways to free up space..

SequoiaView
http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

JDiskReport
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/index.html

Those can help you visually discover where all the space is being used.

In the end - a standard Windows XP installation with all sorts of extras
will not likely be above about 4.5GB to 9GB in size. If you have more space
than that (likely do on a modern machine) and most of it seems to be used -
likely you need to copy *your stuff* off and/or find a better way to manage
it.

 

[Rich Barry]

Anthony, rt click the C: icon and choose Properties>Disk Cleanup>More
Options>System Restore>Cleanup. Click Ok to all. Try using cut and paste
to move files

 

[Gerry]

Anthony

There is software that creates backup copies when you delete files.

You can get some hidden files that are not easily revealed.

Norton Protected Storage was a commonly hidden file?
http://snipurl.com/cg3gg [service1_symantec_com]

Other files not visible include hiberfil.sys, and Rollback files.
Rollback is another tpe of back up software.

One way sometimes to discover the existence of larger hidden files is
that they can be revealed in the Most Fragmented Files list in a Disk
Defragmenter Report. Of course the files need to be fragmented to be
seen but those of significant size usually are if the disk needs to be
defragmented. Sometimes these files can be so large there is not
sufficient contiguous free space to be able to totally defragment them.

You should be able to get the Analyse function in Disk Defragmenter to
work but you probably will not get defragment to work given that 15%
free disk space is required..

Don't forget to leave a 50 mb pagefile on the C volume.


--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Bob Harris]

Norton protected storage can be reduced from with the main Norton interface,
sometimes called the Norton Integrator. As I recall, there is a small icon
near the top, right to set preferences for various Norotn products,
including the protected recycle bin.

In all else fails, try booting from a "live" LINUX CD, such as KNOPPIX.
Files hidden to windows will not be hidden to LINUX. You should also be
able to see whether there are individual files (XP default) or a large
container file, which is sometimes used for third-party compression or
encryption.

One simple thing to try, run CHKDSK C: /R and reboot. If there is any
"confusion" in the XP file sustem, that should fix it.

Finally, have you considered erasing all but the last restore point? That
is best done by XP, via its cleanup tool, advanced options.

Anthony

There is software that creates backup copies when you delete files.

You can get some hidden files that are not easily revealed.

Norton Protected Storage was a commonly hidden file?
http://snipurl.com/cg3gg [service1_symantec_com]

Other files not visible include hiberfil.sys, and Rollback files.
Rollback is another tpe of back up software.

One way sometimes to discover the existence of larger hidden files is that
they can be revealed in the Most Fragmented Files list in a Disk
Defragmenter Report. Of course the files need to be fragmented to be seen
but those of significant size usually are if the disk needs to be
defragmented. Sometimes these files can be so large there is not
sufficient contiguous free space to be able to totally defragment them.

You should be able to get the Analyse function in Disk Defragmenter to
work but you probably will not get defragment to work given that 15% free
disk space is required..

Don't forget to leave a 50 mb pagefile on the C volume.


--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We have a user with an older computer. It has only 20Gb hard disk
(C. I want to set her up on another computer. On her current
computer, she has a second hard disk of 120 GB but that is a separate
drive (E. E: is not a mounted disk onto C:. I moved her paging
file to the E: drive.

She has filled up the C: drive (99%). I am trying to remove some
stuff (pictures and music) from the C: drive by moving it over to the
E: drive (lots of free space). I do it with a copy, then delete,
removing the deleted files from the recycle bin.

No matter what I move, I cannot get the used disk space to lower.

Could this be compressed files that the system is automatically
uncompressing.

What else could be causing this?