image 26 GB larger?!!

[Linea Recta]

I was routinely imaging my system drive yesterday using MacriumReflect.
However, this time I found it took suspiciously long to complete.
After it finished finally I took a look at the image file.
The image was 26 GB larger than normal!
No wonder it took long to complete.
Now, I always clean up and fix as many problems as possible before imaging
the drive, so I had no clue what had gone wrong.
I decided to search a disk space program and I downloaded Spacesniffer.
In this handy utility it became obvious what gobbled up the disk space: a
folder called 'NetHood'.

I've never engaged in using this folder. What's it for and can I delete its
contents?



--
thanks,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[JJ]

I was routinely imaging my system drive yesterday using MacriumReflect.
However, this time I found it took suspiciously long to complete.
After it finished finally I took a look at the image file.
The image was 26 GB larger than normal!
No wonder it took long to complete.
Now, I always clean up and fix as many problems as possible before imaging
the drive, so I had no clue what had gone wrong.
I decided to search a disk space program and I downloaded Spacesniffer.
In this handy utility it became obvious what gobbled up the disk space: a
folder called 'NetHood'.

I've never engaged in using this folder. What's it for and can I delete its
contents?

It's a folder that stores network sortcuts. The Network Places shows the
contents of this folder.

That folder is also used by the Web Folders (see the Windows Help).
Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 also use that folder to store received
files. Other softwares may use that folder too.

 

[Paul]

I was routinely imaging my system drive yesterday using MacriumReflect.
However, this time I found it took suspiciously long to complete.
After it finished finally I took a look at the image file.
The image was 26 GB larger than normal!
No wonder it took long to complete.
Now, I always clean up and fix as many problems as possible before imaging
the drive, so I had no clue what had gone wrong.
I decided to search a disk space program and I downloaded Spacesniffer.
In this handy utility it became obvious what gobbled up the disk space: a
folder called 'NetHood'.

I've never engaged in using this folder. What's it for and can I delete its
contents?

I'd want to figure out what the files were first.

When I Googled for Nethood, one person claimed that offline
storage could be associated with the bloat there. Yet, that
person said they couldn't see any big files in it.

You could try SequoiaView, which is a tool for finding oversized
files. You can hover the mouse over a rectangle which is larger
than the others, and get the file name. You can also get it to open
the associated folder. One person suspected something like \\server\movies
was responsible for dropping large files in that place.

http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/visualization/sequoiaview//

http://w3.win.tue.nl/uploads/media/Sequoia1.3Install.exe or
http://w3.win.tue.nl/uploads/media/Sequoia3.1Install.zip

The second tool I like, is "nfi" for NTFS. Doesn't work for
FAT32 partitions, but is used for NTFS.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/253066
http://download.microsoft.com/download/win2000srv/utility/3.0/nt45/en-us/oem3sr2.zip

That should dump all the file names on a partition. Or come
close to it. It only misses a couple of things. So if there
are files in Nethood, it should see them.

There are plenty of other tools to do what the above two do,
but that's a start. At least, short of booting Linux and
having a look around that way (which works great, until you
break something).

Paul

 

[Linea Recta]

I'd want to figure out what the files were first.

When I Googled for Nethood, one person claimed that offline
storage could be associated with the bloat there. Yet, that
person said they couldn't see any big files in it.

You could try SequoiaView, which is a tool for finding oversized
files. You can hover the mouse over a rectangle which is larger
than the others, and get the file name. You can also get it to open
the associated folder. One person suspected something like \\server\movies
was responsible for dropping large files in that place.

http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/visualization/sequoiaview//

http://w3.win.tue.nl/uploads/media/Sequoia1.3Install.exe or
http://w3.win.tue.nl/uploads/media/Sequoia3.1Install.zip

The second tool I like, is "nfi" for NTFS. Doesn't work for
FAT32 partitions, but is used for NTFS.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/253066
http://download.microsoft.com/download/win2000srv/utility/3.0/nt45/en-us/oem3sr2.zip

That should dump all the file names on a partition. Or come
close to it. It only misses a couple of things. So if there
are files in Nethood, it should see them.

There are plenty of other tools to do what the above two do,
but that's a start. At least, short of booting Linux and
having a look around that way (which works great, until you
break something).

Thanks for your information.
For the time being I'm still exploring Spacesniffer. Now I can see some
nethood subfolders, which indicate it is about backups of documents I
regularly make to an external hard disk. I use SecondCopy8 for these copies
and synchronisations. Of course I expect the contents to end up on the
external USB drive (and they do). But I'm really puzzled why this contents
has to end up doubled up on my C: drive in "nethood" ??




--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[Paul]

Thanks for your information.
For the time being I'm still exploring Spacesniffer. Now I can see some
nethood subfolders, which indicate it is about backups of documents I
regularly make to an external hard disk. I use SecondCopy8 for these copies
and synchronisations. Of course I expect the contents to end up on the
external USB drive (and they do). But I'm really puzzled why this contents
has to end up doubled up on my C: drive in "nethood" ??

A theory would be, you had some server set up at one time, for your
SecondCopy8, and the tool thinks it is putting a copy in offline
storage, for when the server comes back ?

I couldn't find any tech articles for how such a thing would work.
But think back to whether you were using a Share or something for the
output of SecondCopy8.

Paul

 

[Linea Recta]

A theory would be, you had some server set up at one time, for your
SecondCopy8, and the tool thinks it is putting a copy in offline
storage, for when the server comes back ?

I couldn't find any tech articles for how such a thing would work.
But think back to whether you were using a Share or something for the
output of SecondCopy8.

Yes, actually I did. But I had no idea what I was getting into :-(
Starting at the beginning of the story, I got a TomTom XL and I installed
the accompanying TomTom Home on the notebook. With this app I can manage the
device through USB. One of the functions is to make a backup of the GPS
memory. On the notebook I have a big partition, and a small one (FAT) for
system recovery. I regularly make images of C: but I didn't want the TomTom
backup (1.5 GB) to be included in every image of C: so I rederected the
TomTom backup to the small partition.
Next I thiught I would be a good idea (for extra safety) to synchronise the
TomTom backup files to an external USB drive connected to my other PC
through my wlan network. For this I had to make the TomTom backup folder
shared. After that I could use SecondCopy on the other computer to copy the
TT files over the network to the USB drive.

But now I'm getting ever more confused: reading about nethood folder I
understood it stores shortcuts. If so, that's fine with me, but it seems it
stores a lot more than that! It also contains all the file content itself
and that doesn't make any sense to me. Of course this would take up loads of
space on the PC's and in all images of PC's?!




--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[Linea Recta]

Yes, actually I did. But I had no idea what I was getting into :-(
Starting at the beginning of the story, I got a TomTom XL and I installed
the accompanying TomTom Home on the notebook. With this app I can manage
the device through USB. One of the functions is to make a backup of the
GPS memory. On the notebook I have a big partition, and a small one (FAT)
for system recovery. I regularly make images of C: but I didn't want the
TomTom backup (1.5 GB) to be included in every image of C: so I rederected
the TomTom backup to the small partition.
Next I thiught I would be a good idea (for extra safety) to synchronise
the TomTom backup files to an external USB drive connected to my other PC
through my wlan network. For this I had to make the TomTom backup folder
shared. After that I could use SecondCopy on the other computer to copy
the TT files over the network to the USB drive.

But now I'm getting ever more confused: reading about nethood folder I
understood it stores shortcuts. If so, that's fine with me, but it seems
it stores a lot more than that! It also contains all the file content
itself and that doesn't make any sense to me. Of course this would take up
loads of space on the PC's and in all images of PC's?!

Alright, I finally succeeded in cleaning up this mess. Initially I couldn't
remove the errorous share in nethood: "file names too long" etc. Had to use
chkdsk and some indexes were fixed. Been working like mad, renaming
(shortening) paths after which the junk could be deleted. Now nethood
contains 56 kB. Removing hiberfil.sys and I think I have all junk under
control. Still having to make new image, I won't go to bed tonight...



--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[Paul]

Alright, I finally succeeded in cleaning up this mess. Initially I couldn't
remove the errorous share in nethood: "file names too long" etc. Had to use
chkdsk and some indexes were fixed. Been working like mad, renaming
(shortening) paths after which the junk could be deleted. Now nethood
contains 56 kB. Removing hiberfil.sys and I think I have all junk under
control. Still having to make new image, I won't go to bed tonight...

I won't go to bed tonight...

Your plaque for "relentless dedication", is in the mail

The backup should go quicker now.

Paul

 

[Linea Recta]

I won't go to bed tonight...

Your plaque for "relentless dedication", is in the mail

The backup should go quicker now.

Yes, and smaller too! Everything is back to normal. Still hunting
(relentessly) for wasted space in spare time...



--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os