defrag hard drive

G

Guest

I got a message that i was running short on hard drive space, I looked at my
hard drive and showed that it was full. I went to defrag and it showed almost
complete red , with only 9% available. Last time I defraged about a month ago
I was only using about 17% of my harddrive. After I defraged it was
unchanged. I am using xp and I have a screen shot of the defrag if it
matters. I would apreciate any help possible.
 
E

Elmo

lostspace said:
I got a message that I was running short on hard drive space, I looked at my
hard drive and showed that it was full. I went to defrag and it showed almost
complete red, with only 9% available. Last time I defragged about a month ago
I was only using about 17% of my harddrive. After I defragged it was
unchanged. I am using xp and I have a screen shot of the defrag if it
matters. I would apreciate any help possible.

A defrag aligns files so the sectors are contiguous. That way the heads
on the hd don't need to jump all over to get to the next piece of the
file. That would help the speed of the file access, but won't save hd
space.

You probably need a larger hd.
 
R

Rock

lostspace said:
I got a message that i was running short on hard drive space, I looked at
my
hard drive and showed that it was full. I went to defrag and it showed
almost
complete red , with only 9% available. Last time I defraged about a month
ago
I was only using about 17% of my harddrive. After I defraged it was
unchanged. I am using xp and I have a screen shot of the defrag if it
matters. I would apreciate any help possible.

I'm not sure why you titled this post with defrag. Defrag has nothing to do
with this issue. You are concerned with why the drive filled up, no?

How big is the drive? Use one of the many free utilities to see what's
using up all the space, such as TreeSize Free from here:
http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

Make sure from Windows Explorer you go into Tools | Folder Options | View
and mark "Show hidden files and folders", and uncheck "Hide protected
operating system files".

Do you have a Norton Recycle bin? If so have you emptied it? Deleted the
temporary internet files? Do you have any backup / recovery software like
Norton GoBack installed?

System Restore can take up to 12% of the drive, which is too much for larger
drives, but that won't account for all the space that has been taken.

As a matter or course free space should not be allowed to get below 15% -
20%. XP's built in defragmenter needs 15% free space to run.
 
G

Guest

U need at least 15%:
Click Start - All Prog - Accessories - System Tools - Disk Cleanup:

Delete files you may not need - suchas:

Temporary Internet Files
Office setup files, etc....

U can also go to "add/remove prog" in Control Panel & remove unnecessary
programs.
 
G

Guest

the actual problem is that i jumped from using about 12 gigs of space to
using all 37 gigs, my computer is still operating and allowing me to download
(tree) but it still shows almost full red and only 3 mbs of space left
 
R

Rock

lostspace said:
the actual problem is that i jumped from using about 12 gigs of space to
using all 37 gigs, my computer is still operating and allowing me to
download
(tree) but it still shows almost full red and only 3 mbs of space left

Ok, so what have you found about about what is taking all the space? Do you
have any of those programs I asked about? No one is going to be able to
solve this for you. You are in front of your computer screen, so you have
to see where the space is going.
 
B

Bill James

Have you run bootvis on your system? If so, depending on the options you selected it will continue to build trace data. It's been awhile, and I don't remember all the details, but if that rings a bell with you then a few minutes with Google will allow you to find the answer, I'm sure.
 
R

Rock

Have you run bootvis on your system? If so, depending on the options you
selected it will continue to build trace data. It's been awhile, and I
don't remember all the details, but if that rings a bell with you then a few
minutes with Google will allow you to find the answer, I'm sure.

lostspace said:
done all that, thanks though, still no disk space

Ahh, yes I forgot about bootvis doing that.
 
N

NoStop

lostspace said:
I got a message that i was running short on hard drive space, I looked at
my hard drive and showed that it was full. I went to defrag and it showed
almost complete red , with only 9% available. Last time I defraged about a
month ago I was only using about 17% of my harddrive. After I defraged it
was unchanged. I am using xp and I have a screen shot of the defrag if it
matters. I would apreciate any help possible.

Defragging a hard drive does not free up space. What it does is attempt to
keep file clusters contiguous on the hard drive. You'll need to start
actually deleting files from your hard drive to free up space.

Cheers.
 
G

Guest

The 40GB HDD is too small if you're loading much media. You've got a few
options to fix where you're at. First, you could delete a bunch of files then
defrag, but you'd probably fill that 40GB up again pretty quickly. Second,
you could expand your HDD space. If you're willing and able to get inside the
box, you could add a 120GB GDD for about $60, including shipping. Check out
places like NewEgg.com. If you don't want to open the box, you could add a
USB drive for not too much more. The big box guys (Staples and Best Buy) run
ads frequently. A recent Staples ad showed a 60GB for $50 after rebate and
250GB for $80 after rebate. A USB drive will run more slowly, but you don't
have any installation issues. With more HDD space, you could move all your
files to the new drive and defrag your program HDD.
 
G

Guest

I am having the same problem. I went to run a defrag, which I do regularly
and it showed I only had 1% free space ............I noticed people telling
you to see where your space is going? How do we ck that. I have deleted
everything that I don't use and still can't free any space to defrag. I will
be interested in what you find out.
 
G

Gerry

How large is your hard disk and how much free space. If partitioned
please
provide details for each partition. Right click on your C drive in
Windows
and select Properties to get this information.

It is likely that an allocation of 12% has been made to System Restore
on your C partition which is over generous. I would reduce it to 700
mb. Right click your My Computer icon on the Desktop and select System
Restore. Place the cursor on your C drive select Settings but this
time find the slider and drag it to the left until it reads 700 mb and
exit. When you get to the Settings screen click on Apply and OK and
exit.

Another default setting on a large drive which could be wasteful is
that for temporary internet files especially if you do not store
offline copies on disk. The default allocation is 3% of drive.
Depending on your attitude to offline copies you could reduce this to
1% or 2%. In Internet Explorer select Tools, Internet Options,
General, Temporary Internet Files, Settings to make the change. At the
same time look at the number of days history is held.

The default allocation for the Recycle Bin is 10 % of drive. Change to
5%, which should be sufficient. In Windows Explorer place the cursor
on your Recycle Bin, right click and select Properties, Global and
move the slider from 10% to 5%. However, try to avoid letting it get
too full as if it is full and you delete a file by mistake it will
bypass the Recycle Bin and be gone for ever.


If your C drive is formatted as NTFS another potential gain arises
with your operating system on your C drive. In the Windows Directory
of your C partition you will have some Uninstall folders in your
Windows folder typically: $NtServicePackUninstall$ and
$NtUninstallKB282010$ etc. These files may be compressed or not
compressed. If compressed the text of the folder name appears in blue
characters. If not compressed you can compress them. Right click on
each folder and select Properties, General, Advanced and check the box
before Compress contents to save Disk Space. On the General Tab you
can see the amount gained by deducting the size on disk from the size.
Folder compression is only an option on a NTFS formatted drive /
partition.

Select Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp to
Empty your Recycle Bin and Remove Temporary Internet Files. Also select
Start, All Programs, accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp, More
Options, System Restore and remove all but the latest System Restore
point. Run Disk Defragmenter. Follow this procedure for each partition
in turn.



--

Hope this helps.

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

John John

I know the utility and it's not new to me. It will do absolutely
nothing to help the OP's problems. It is a handy utility for defragging
single large files, like sql files, but otherwise it isn't better or
worse than the Windows built-in defrag utility, it uses the Windows
defrag API to do its work!

John
 
M

mikeyhsd

did you run Disk Cleanup utility and select all the boxes including the extra options to remove all but latest restore point.




(e-mail address removed)



I am having the same problem. I went to run a defrag, which I do regularly
and it showed I only had 1% free space ............I noticed people telling
you to see where your space is going? How do we ck that. I have deleted
everything that I don't use and still can't free any space to defrag. I will
be interested in what you find out.
 

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