Erosion of free space on hard drive becoming used space.

G

Guest

I recently noticed that my free space on hard drive has been eroded and my
used space has been increasing. I have not added any software. Much to my
dismay I cannot figure out why this would occur. We did make recovery disks
and removed our partition some weeks ago. It seems our C drive is using up
space without any explanation. Ran many different anti virus and spyware
software and they did not detect anything. Does any one know why this would
happen and how do I stop it?
 
M

Michael Cecil

I recently noticed that my free space on hard drive has been eroded and my
used space has been increasing. I have not added any software. Much to my
dismay I cannot figure out why this would occur. We did make recovery disks
and removed our partition some weeks ago. It seems our C drive is using up
space without any explanation. Ran many different anti virus and spyware
software and they did not detect anything. Does any one know why this would
happen and how do I stop it?

Get a copy of SequoiaView and see where the space is going. Perhaps it's
being consumed by System Restore snapshots?
http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/
 
M

Maurice N ~ MVP

Check the Windows Explorer "View" options --- set it to show you all folders; all system folders; & hidden files.
Bring up Windows Explorer / Tools / Folder Options/ select VIEW Tab and look at all of settings listed.

"CHECK" (turn on) Display the contents of system folders.

Under column, Hidden files and folders----choose ( *select* ) Show hidden files and folders.
Next, un-check Hide extensions for known file types.
Next un-check Hide protected operating system files.

Now then, in Windows Explorer, go to My Computer. See how much free space is on your HD.

Run Disk Cleanup to free up space.
Search for all .tmp files & remove them. Find your \Temp folders & clean them out.

Look at the root of your C drive. How large is the Pagefile.sys (swap file) ? (Just see what size it is).

If you see a Hiberfil.sys and you do not use hibernation, you may delete that file.

Also, you can run SEARCH (from start menus) to look for recently created or recently modified files. Notice you can also search by Size of file.
I'd suggest you search for files created in last month or so.
 
G

Guest

Michael,
Thanks for your input. I did download SequoiaView and the graphic showed
clearly the actual usage being approximately 10.7GB and rest was free. It
seems there is an error in Windows and I am still losing free space according
to Windows figures but not in reality. I did notice that Sequoia uses the
figures provided by Windows, resulting in 907% of disk space being free, as
it appears in the bottom right, which reflects the discrepancy between the
graphic, which tells the truth, and the erroneous Windows figures. Basically
Sequoia confirms I do have all the free space shown on the graphics. Windows
is screwed up, but how could this happen? What is the solution and how do I
stop this from happening?

Raider
 

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