Lost HD Space

B

Bob

I went to defrag my 16GB HD, and it showed only 2.04 GB free space, and it
noted that it would not defrag correctly. I went to my control panel, Add &
Remove, and added up all the programs installed. This was 2030.25 MB, or
just over 2GB. Where is all the other 14GB's? It's not used up in
programs. Does this long string of Security Updates for Windows, Windows XP
Hotfix taking up all that other space on the HD? I've got boo-koos of them.
I don't know much about this, but I can add and subtract.
Any suggestions?
 
S

Shenan Stanley

Bob said:
I went to defrag my 16GB HD, and it showed only 2.04 GB free space,
and it noted that it would not defrag correctly. I went to my
control panel, Add & Remove, and added up all the programs
installed. This was 2030.25 MB, or just over 2GB. Where is all
the other 14GB's? It's not used up in programs. Does this long
string of Security Updates for Windows, Windows XP Hotfix taking
up all that other space on the HD? I've got boo-koos of them. I
don't know much about this, but I can add and subtract. Any suggestions?

If you are comfortable with the stability of your system, you can delete the
uninstall files for the patches that Windows XP has installed...
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/spack.htm

Used Disk Cleanup?
Is hibernate turned on and do you use that feature?
Uninstalled unnecessary applications lately?

You can run Disk Cleanup - built into Windows XP - to erase all but your
latest restore point and cleanup even more "loose files"..

How to use Disk Cleanup
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312

You can turn off hibernation if it is on and you don't use it..

When you hibernate your computer, Windows saves the contents of the system's
memory to the hiberfil.sys file. As a result, the size of the hiberfil.sys
file will always equal the amount of physical memory in your system. If you
don't use the hibernate feature and want to recapture the space that Windows
uses for the hiberfil.sys file, perform the following steps:

- Start the Control Panel Power Options applet (go to Start, Settings,
Control Panel, and click Power Options).
- Select the Hibernate tab, clear the "Enable hibernation" check box, then
click OK; although you might think otherwise, selecting Never under the
"System hibernates" option on the Power Schemes tab doesn't delete the
hiberfil.sys file.
- Windows will remove the "System hibernates" option from the Power Schemes
tab and delete the hiberfil.sys file.

You can control how much space your System Restore can use...

1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the System Restore tab.
3. Highlight one of your drives (or C: if you only have one) and click on
the "Settings" button.
4. Change the percentage of disk space you wish to allow.. I suggest moving
the slider until you have just about 1GB (1024MB or close to that...)
5. Click OK.. Then Click OK again.

You can control how much space your Temporary Internet Files can utilize...

Empty your Temporary Internet Files and shrink the size it stores to a
size between 64MB and 256MB..

- Open ONE copy of Internet Explorer.
- Select TOOLS -> Internet Options.
- Under the General tab in the "Temporary Internet Files" section, do the
following:
- Click on "Delete Cookies" (click OK)
- Click on "Settings" and change the "Amount of disk space to use:" to
something between 64MB and 256MB. (It may be MUCH larger right
now.)
- Click OK.
- Click on "Delete Files" and select to "Delete all offline contents"
(the checkbox) and click OK. (If you had a LOT, this could take 2-10
minutes or more.)
- Once it is done, click OK, close Internet Explorer, re-open Internet
Explorer.

You can use an application that scans your system for log files and
temporary files and use that to get rid of those:

Ccleaner (Free!)
http://www.ccleaner.com/

Other ways to free up space..

SequoiaView
http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

DX Hog Hunt
http://www.dvxp.com/en/Downloads.aspx

JDiskReport
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/index.html

Those can help you visually discover where all the space is being used.

If you are concerned over less than 5GB of space total at any given time
being freed up on your hard disk drive - then something is wrong and
you would be better off spending $100 and putting in a drive that is likely
3-8 times as large as what you have not and not concerning yourself over
such a small amount of space OR you seriously need to consider what you
really need on the system and what should be archived.

Basic housekeeping 101... - in an actual home, if your storage area gets
full - you either have to decide what you really should have in the storage
area and what could go or you have to find a new place to store stuff
that will accommodate everything you need. You don't walk into a
warehouse of cars, look at the filing cabinet in the corner where
you keep all the records for the cars and decide that if you move it out of
the warehouse - you will have more room for cars. ;-)
 
R

Richard in AZ

Bob said:
I went to defrag my 16GB HD, and it showed only 2.04 GB free space, and it noted that it would not
defrag correctly. I went to my control panel, Add & Remove, and added up all the programs
installed. This was 2030.25 MB, or just over 2GB. Where is all the other 14GB's? It's not used
up in programs. Does this long string of Security Updates for Windows, Windows XP Hotfix taking
up all that other space on the HD? I've got boo-koos of them. I don't know much about this, but I
can add and subtract.
Any suggestions?
Bob:
Think about it. Did you See the Window Operating System in your Add/Remove Programs?
Did you see your documents, your music, your pictures, etc. in the Add/Remove Programs?
The Add/Remove Programs is not the right place to count Bytes.
You might get a reasonable count if you went to Windows Explorer and right mouse clicked on every
folder and looked at "properties", but be also aware that there are a lot of hidden files and
folders. Hidden to prevent the novice from deleting critical files.

A 16GB Hard Drive is quite small by today's hard drive standards and only having 2 GB free is too
little to defrag and you will soon be having virtual memory errors. Buy a larger drive and mirror
the old drive over to the new drive.
 
G

Gerry

Bob

The default allocation to System Restore is 12% 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 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 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, System
Information, Tools, Dr Watson and verify that the box before "Append to
existing log" is NOT checked. This means the next time the log is
written it will overwrite rather than add to the existing file.

The default maximum size setting for Event Viewer logs is too large.
Reset the maximum for each log from 512 kb to 128 kb and set it to
overwrite.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us

Restart your computer and you should now be able to run Disk
Defragmenter. Please advise how much free disk space you have.


--



Hope this helps.

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

Bob

Thanks Guys. I did all you all told me...Gerry, Shenan, and I went from
2.04GB to 3.63BG free space. Amazing what a difference these changes made.
However, I had about 6 years worth of Temp. files stored up I didn't know I
had.
Many, many thanks again. You guys are a valuable tool on this forum.
Bob
 
B

Bob

After doing all the resets, I again defragged the HD, and found some files
that cannot be defragged, I did a printout of them, and one was Google Earth
that was 400 MB. The others were small files of a video editing program. I
am afraid to delete them. Google was hiding somewhere in the background,
but I did a search and found it. I had previously deleted it off my system,
but some was left behind. Doing this increased me to 4.03GB free space. or
25%. Thanks again.
Gerry.........I never could find the Event Viewer logs. I did a search and
a pop up advised me.........not found.
 

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