Mysterious disk space consumption

[Guest]

Vista reports that my 250G drive is full, when I believe there should be
only about 119G in use. I am mystified as to this disconnect. Details
follow...

I recently did a clean install of Vista Ultimate to my desktop on which the
primary drive is a 250G drive, for which Vista reports 227G of usable
capacity. (No surprise so far.)

The only substantive data resides in the following directories:
\users - 90G - My personal data, which I restored from a backup drive
after Vista install
\program files - 14G
\windows - 11G

I downloaded a couple programs to analyze/display disk usage, and each shows
that I am using a total of about 119G. But meanwhile, Vista is giving me
occasional warnings that my disk is almost full, and when I run "properties"
on the c: drive, it tells me I am consuming 222G of the available 227G.

I have set up windows explorer to display all hidden and system files, but I
see no evidence of any system files that are consuming the difference between
the 119G (known files) and 222G (Vista reported usage.)

I ran chkdsk /f and “Disk Cleanupâ€, but neither freed up any significant
space.

What could be consuming this mysterious, missing 103G ( = 222-119 ) of
space? And how can I recover it? (BTW, up until I installed Vista a few
months ago, XP reported approximately 100G of extra capacity, as was
expected.)

Thanks,
Bruce

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

What disk utilities and security programs are you using?

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Guest]

I am using Carbonite.com for remote backup, and I use Microsoft OneCare for
security. Are either of these known to cause such a problem?
-- Bruce

 

[Guest]

I wonder how big your \Windows\WinSxS shows when you right click it?

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Uninstall OneCare, see if the problem goes away.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[kevj66]

Try looking at this site


http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/vista/vista_volume_shadow_copy.htm#Check_the_master_VSS_switch



this should explain things

it appears Vista creates mutliple back ups just in case things go wrong - it can allocate upto 30% of your hard disk space to this task!! on a 320GB drive that's 48GB!

if you follow the instructions on this web site you can reclaim some of the lost space - i reset mine to a 12GB maximum which allows 3 shaddow copies just in case!

hope this helps

cheers

Kev