Hard drive capacity decimated - help please

  • Thread starter Thread starter ECLiPSE 2002
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ECLiPSE 2002

PC specs: Pentium 4, 512 MB memory, 40 GB hard drive with Windows XP
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Last week I had 85% of my hard drive capacity and for some unknown
reason now I show 90% of the hard drive as used!

I am at a loss to explain what has caused this dramatic change. I
haven't done anything new or unusual in the past week.

I had hoped that I could run system restore in the event that some
program or its executable has gone wild and get back to an earlier
state but System Recovery will not run because of a virtual memory
problem?

I would appreciate any input or guidance on how I can learn what is
responsible for this over utilization, or what steps I might take to
find and remedy theis situation.

I have run two different full virus scans and nothing was found.

I have run two different disk cleanup utilities

I have run defrag and error checking utilities

Should I examine every program folder and subfolder to look for
excessive file sizes?

I would appreciate any input or guidance on how I can learn what may
be responsible for this over utilization, or what steps I might take
to find and remedy this situation.

Thanks for any assistance.

Mary
 
ECLiPSE said:
PC specs: Pentium 4, 512 MB memory, 40 GB hard drive with Windows XP
Home

Last week I had 85% of my hard drive capacity and for some unknown
reason now I show 90% of the hard drive as used!

I am at a loss to explain what has caused this dramatic change. I
haven't done anything new or unusual in the past week.
Click to expand...

5% of a 40GB hard drive is "dramatic change"?

Get some directory/file size display utility (Google) and see what is taking
up all the space.. Or easier yet..

Look through Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel and see what is there
you do not need.. Remove it.. Then open your My Computer and the C:\ drive
and right click on each main folder and get its properties.. Find out which
main folder is taking up the most space. Windows and Program Files probably
take up a lot.. But you could also have files in your profile (C:\Documents
and Settings\YourUsername) that you put there.
 
The first think I would do is something quite passive, i.e. just have a look
only at what is taking up un-needed space.
Download "sequoiaview" from http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/
That will give you a full breakdown on everything on your PC, the larger the
file/folder, the larger the block shown in sequoiaview - hover the mouse
over the larger ones & it will tell you where it is, what its called & the
size.
To use a hackneyed phrase - 'best thing since sliced bread' - & it can't
make any changes to your programs!
 
Shenan said:
5% of a 40GB hard drive is "dramatic change"?
Click to expand...

I reckon what she meant was that it was 85% empty and is now 90% full,
though I could be wrong... That would certainly worry me!
 
Many thanks to the responders - as a point of clarification the
problem I identified (very poorly) was that I had 85% of my hard drive
capacity unused one week and the following week only 10% was unused.

The problem turned out to be System Restore - for some reason there
were multiple system restore points and the total overwhelmed the hard
drive.

Mary
 
That's normal, seeing you have a small drive.
Right-click on My Computer/Properties/System restore tab & move the slider
back to a more maneagable point, such as as 2 or 4%.
You will then find the points going back months will suddenly disappear,
leaving you only with the ones for the last few days, or a week, depending
on how much you use your PC & how often you install & uninstall progs. -
(you may as well defrag after all that)
 
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