Disk reports FULL even after deletes, etc

[voice_of_reason]

Greetings:

I am having a problem whereby my disk is reporting as FULL (123MB
remaining on a 18.6GB drive)

ODDITY 1:
When I add up the sizes of the files on the drive, it comes to just
under 13GB. Even adding in space reserved for system restore, this
takes it to 15GB

ODDITY 2:
Running disk clean-up, it shows that it should recover approximately
2GB.....but after running and even rebooting, the available space
jumped up to only about 400MB....and then on subsequent reboot when
back to only 123MB.

How can I find out what is taking up the free space on the drive and
remove it?

Thank you!

 

[Hot-Text]

It all in the Virtual Memory
Time to get a New HDD or
You Delete some *.mp3, *.AVI, *.MOV will help

 

[Char Jackson]

Greetings:

I am having a problem whereby my disk is reporting as FULL (123MB
remaining on a 18.6GB drive)

ODDITY 1:
When I add up the sizes of the files on the drive, it comes to just
under 13GB. Even adding in space reserved for system restore, this
takes it to 15GB

ODDITY 2:
Running disk clean-up, it shows that it should recover approximately
2GB.....but after running and even rebooting, the available space
jumped up to only about 400MB....and then on subsequent reboot when
back to only 123MB.

How can I find out what is taking up the free space on the drive and
remove it?

Thank you!

First of all, an 18GB drive probably belongs in a museum. For $30 to
$60 you can pick up a new drive with 10x-20x the capacity. Then you
could stop worrying about a few Megabytes.

System Restore takes some space. Disable it if space is more important
than protection.

Make sure the Recycle Bin is empty. When you delete files, they get
marked for deletion and moved to the Recycle Bin, but they are usually
not immediately deleted.

Windows uses some drive space for its own housekeeping. For example,
if this is your boot drive, there will be a potentially large (and
hidden) pagefile.sys in the root folder, among other system files.

When you format a drive, sectors are created of a fixed size. Stored
files don't always fit neatly into those fixed size sectors. The
unused space, or slack, is wasted, and the situation is worse if the
drive holds more small files.

If you have 123MB free and you try to store a file bigger than that,
Windows will report that the drive is full because the file you're
trying to store simply won't fit. So even though the drive has 123MB
free, it's full as far as Windows is concerned when the file you're
trying to save won't fit.

Those are a few of the things to consider. Your best options appear to
be to delete some files, add a second drive, or replace the existing
drive with a bigger one.

 

[philo]

Greetings:

I am having a problem whereby my disk is reporting as FULL (123MB
remaining on a 18.6GB drive)

ODDITY 1:
When I add up the sizes of the files on the drive, it comes to just
under 13GB. Even adding in space reserved for system restore, this
takes it to 15GB

ODDITY 2:
Running disk clean-up, it shows that it should recover approximately
2GB.....but after running and even rebooting, the available space
jumped up to only about 400MB....and then on subsequent reboot when
back to only 123MB.

How can I find out what is taking up the free space on the drive and
remove it?

Thank you!

By default, System Restore is set way too large to be of any use other than
hogging hard drive space.

Turn it down to something like 4% or so

 

[Paul]

Greetings:

I am having a problem whereby my disk is reporting as FULL (123MB
remaining on a 18.6GB drive)

ODDITY 1:
When I add up the sizes of the files on the drive, it comes to just
under 13GB. Even adding in space reserved for system restore, this
takes it to 15GB

ODDITY 2:
Running disk clean-up, it shows that it should recover approximately
2GB.....but after running and even rebooting, the available space
jumped up to only about 400MB....and then on subsequent reboot when
back to only 123MB.

How can I find out what is taking up the free space on the drive and
remove it?

Thank you!

You can use SequoiaView, to view the contents of your disk.

http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/o...sualization/sequoiaview/download_sequoiaview/

It uses colored rectangles, to represent files. And that may
make it easier to spot a "hog".

http://w3.win.tue.nl/typo3temp/pics/736444cb4d.jpg

I was running a piece of software yesterday, that was doing a
download, and yet the file was not stored in the temp directory.
Using Sequoiaview, and doing a "refresh", I was able to spot where
the file was actually being stored by that program.

You could have some software installed, which is making hidden
copies of stuff. Think about any special software you've installed.

Paul