Storage Full - but it can't be

[Paul Butcher]

1 month from purchase my C drive was full all 68GB – no music, no videos. I
use disk clean-up and a miserly 3mb are cleared. I search the drive for
every file >1kb giving the total of all files hidden and not as 16GB. I try
the computer tools/storage to ascertain why it’s full, disk rescan. I try
number of things but nothing. The next day I reboot the laptop and as if by
magic I have 52GB space capacity. 1 month I am at the time point 1GB spare
capacity, I use TreeSize that tells me I have files totally 17GB. Why is
Vista telling me I have no space left? What did I do last time that solved
the problem? Help?

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Have you scanned the disk for errors yet? You will find this (error
checking) on the tools tab of the drive's properties.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Paul Butcher]

Thanks Rick, this is actually the "chkdisk" routine which runs when you
restatrt after sleclecting error check

 

[Rick Rogers]

Right, it may correct the space reporting problems.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Paul Butcher]

Didn't work - now down to my last 340mb according to windows and storage
appears to go down even when I delete files and remove them from the trash

 

[Bob]

That's not surprising with only 68GB.
I didn't know you could even purchase a PC with that small of a HD.

In any event, uninstall programs you don't use.

 

[Paul Butcher]

Bob,

Regardless of the size - unintalling progrms woild not help that much On the
main patition there is meant to be 67GB of which program files in total
equate to 3.8GB, my data files total 2.7GB, windows 8.5 GB other odds and
ends plus sysytem files 1.5GB which is just short of 17GB. The issue I have
got is what are the other 50GB being used for given the numbers above include
virtual memory

And in theroy 80GB should be enough for emails and word documents, i do not
use the laptop for music or video or games which are all on a 500GB desktop.

So what am I missing

 

[Mick Murphy]

I have 80G HD, which equates to 75G; of which I have used 50G, using Home
Premium.

Paging file takes 1 and1/2 times RAM by default.
System Restore takes 15% of the total capacity of HD.
I don't have shadow copies in my version(Home Premium), whereas you might.

 

[Paul Butcher]

Mick,

Thanks for this - so paging is at say 1& 1/2 Ram so 1.5GB, but I did not
realise system restore was on using a large 56GB - how that works I do not
know but as soon as I turned it off I had 56GB free capacity.

Given i back my files up - I can live without the restore option.

 

[Bob]

It's not a good idea to turn off System Restore. You can not restore system
files from a backup. You can limit the disk space allocated to System
Restore.

Press Winkey+r
To reduce (or increase) the disk space allocated, type (or copy and paste)
“vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=c: /for=c: /maxsize=6GB†hit Enter. This
example assumes changing the space on drive C to 6GB.

 

[Paul Butcher]

Thanks Bob

Is 6GB enough? And I assume I have to turn restore back on or does the copy
and paste line below turn on restore and set at the level set?

 

[Bob]

Your welcome Paul.

6GB should be enough for at least 4 restore points. You can always increase
the allocation if you're not comfortable with the number of restore points
being created.

I believe that if you manually create a restore point it will turn SR back
on but check to make sure.