C: is 50%? Howcome?

[Fabrizio]

Hi!!

Does anybody know why the my 40 gb hard disk is almost 50% full when I
reckon to have no more than 5 gb of staff filling it up?
I run the disk clean up, and defrag!

Any help or tips?

Fabrizio

 

[GSV Three Minds in a Can]

Hi!!

Does anybody know why the my 40 gb hard disk is almost 50% full when I
reckon to have no more than 5 gb of staff filling it up?
I run the disk clean up, and defrag!

Are you maybe using Norton Protected Recyle bin?

If not, turn on viewing of hidden, and system/protected files, and have
a look to see where the space went.

 

[Maureen Goldman]

Does anybody know why the my 40 gb hard disk is almost 50% full when I
reckon to have no more than 5 gb of staff filling it up?
I run the disk clean up, and defrag!

Any help or tips?

I *believe* each drive has its own system restore (the system volume
information folder). If the default is used and points saved
automatically, it can add up. Other than that, there's the size of the
paging file, and contents of the recycle bin.

 

[Fabrizio]

How do I do that?

Thanks
Fab

Are you maybe using Norton Protected Recyle bin?

If not, turn on viewing of hidden, and system/protected files, and have
a look to see where the space went.

 

[GSV Three Minds in a Can]

How do I do that?

Tools, folder options, view - tick the 'show hidden files/folders' box,
un-tick the 'radio button' for 'hide protected OS files'.

I can recommend reading the WinXP help files too - they're actually
quite helpful about stuff like this.

 

[Maureen Goldman]

How do I do that?

You can see enable hidden files to be seen (they look somewhat pale)
by going into the control panel \ folder options \ view.

 

[Fabrizio]

ok!! How do I know what to delete? Because normally those are files
belonging to the operating system or programs!

 

[GSV Three Minds in a Can]

ok!! How do I know what to delete? Because normally those are files
belonging to the operating system or programs!

Tell us where the space went, and we'll tell you what looks
unreasonable.
Hiberfile.sys, for instance, is as big as the amount of RAM you have,
and you only need it if you use hibernation. System restore points and
content indices can result in a large 'system volume information' folder
... reduce system restore size, turn off content indexing.

Similarly temporary internet files (stored in your user profile) will
consume however much space you let them (although on a new system the
amount should be small).

Pagefile.sys may have gotten set to 1.5x your RAM size. That's probably
too much if you have 1GB of RAM, and are not a power user (although
hopefully the actual minimum file size is rather smaller).

Your turn to provide some more information - without knowing where the
space went, we can only guess at what the solution might be.