Vista Eats Up All My Hard Drive Space...

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One sort of diagnostic procedure is to determine where the majority of
the used space is located. Using explorer ( All Views enabled ) Right
click on the following folders and take Properties - examining the used
space parameter.
1.) Windows ( should be ~7.+ Gigabytes)
2.) Program Files
3.) Users
4.) System Volume Information
This can help you determine if it's Windows, System Restore, User data
or a 3rd-Party application containing the missing/excessive disk space.
 
Heres what I found:

Windows folder:
Size: 7.65 GB (8,220,489,748 bytes)
Size on Disk: 7.72 GB (8,297,254,912 bytes)

Program files:
Size: 3.77 GB (4,053,973,126 bytes)
Size on Disk: (4,103,077,888 bytes)

Users:
Size: 37.7 GB (40,563,865,597 bytes)
Size on Disk: 37.7 GB (40,569,778,176 bytes)

System Volume Information
Size: 0 bytes
Size on Disk: 0 bytes

So the Users is the Hog...why and how do I correct that? I only have one
user on this PC.

Chris
 
Then the space must be within your profile and not one of system
based profiles. I'd probably start by trying to narrow down the
location within your profile, concentrating on the user variable Temp
folder. You may have some form of monitoring enabled that is
causing/generating all the content.

I'd probably download & run FileMon from SysInternals. It will
show you real-time disk activity and you might be able to see the
content being accessed.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/Filemon.mspx
 
Ok, chkdsk & explorer both report the same amount of used space, so that's
good.
Looking at other posts, you've narrowed it down to to somewhere in the Users
dir tree.
I would do a search of that dir, including sub dirs & sort by file size.
Make sure you change the view settings to show hidden files & protected
files.

I don't suppose you rip DVD's as if your app leave temp files behind they
will be 4.3gb a go.
 
Ok guys, very very mysterious...My user account ate up all my hard drive
space for some strange and bizarre reason, so I created a new account and
deleted the old one and wolla all my missing hard drive space has been
restored!! Thank you all for your help and I hope this doesn't happen again.

Chris
 
It may do as we never learned the cause.
Would have been good to see which files were responsible.
 
Yeah, but Chris is talking about 66GB gone for virtually nothing. I have
Vista Ultimate, Office 2007 Professional, Visual Studio, a few other
programs on a 20 GB partition and still have almost 9GB left. So something
is definitely wrong there. It sure isn't the search index, system restore,
shadow copies or any of that either. Something else is way wrong, but I
don't know what. Hope someone else does.
 
Bob said:
By today standards 80gig HDD is too small to run your OS and third party
software. You need to get a larger HDD.
Click to expand...

But that's only for Vista. No other OS I'm aware of takes up that much
space. I can't speak for OSX, but I have tried many linux distros, and
many past versions of Windows, and they don't take up that much room.

--
Priceless quotes in m.p.w.vista.general group:
http://protectfreedom.tripod.com/kick.html

Most recent idiotic quote added to KICK (Klassic Idiotic Caption Kooks):
"DRM is not added to anything in Vista."

"Good poets borrow; great poets steal."
- T. S. Eliot
 
For those who would like to see just what is happening on their disk drives
(i.e. what files are being written etc)
a good place to start is the utilities at www.sysinternals.com (Microsoft
owned site) FileMon is particuulary usefull.

Michael
 
One of the most ridiculous statements I have read in this forum.

What can I add but ROFL?
 
I have a laptop with an 80gb hd and Vista Business Edition takes up about 7
gb of that.
Click to expand...

That's more like it. The Windows folder on my Vista partition is about 7.6
GB with Ultimate edition.
 
Nina DiBoy said:
But that's only for Vista. No other OS I'm aware of takes up that much
space. I can't speak for OSX, but I have tried many linux distros, and
many past versions of Windows, and they don't take up that much room.
Click to expand...

It's not even true of vista.
 
This was not clear in your first post, but will stick by my guns that 80gig
HDD is too small.

You have pagefile, Tempfile, IE Tempfiles, System Restore files, this alone
can eat up 10% of your HDD. Plus any third party software will have their
Tempfile. A printer can create a tempfile sometimes as large a 10megs or
more. Depending on what your are printing.
 
Alright, i have a custom made computer Abit Fatal1ty AN9 32x motherboard, AMD AX2 4600+ CPU, 2 gigs of corsair dominator ddr2 ram, dual 250 gig hard drives, and an ATI X1950 XTX video card. I am experiencing the same problem with my setup. of course formatted, my hard drives are around 465 total gigs, i should still have around 415 gigs of hard drive space remaining but its saying that i only have 361-365 gigs of free space.

EggHeadCafe.com - .NET Developer Portal of Choice
http://www.eggheadcafe.com
 
Alright, i have a custom made computer Abit Fatal1ty AN9 32x motherboard, AMD AX2 4600+ CPU, 2 gigs of corsair dominator ddr2 ram, dual 250 gig hard drives, and an ATI X1950 XTX video card. I am experiencing the same problem with my setup. of course formatted, my hard drives are around 465 total gigs, i should still have around 415 gigs of hard drive space remaining but its saying that i only have 361-365 gigs of free space. I dont know what the problem is but i am willing to help you find out what the problem is.

EggHeadCafe.com - .NET Developer Portal of Choice
http://www.eggheadcafe.com
 
Alright, i have a custom made computer Abit Fatal1ty AN9 32x motherboard, AMD AX2 4600+ CPU, 2 gigs of corsair dominator ddr2 ram, dual 250 gig hard drives, and an ATI X1950 XTX video card. I am experiencing the same problem with my setup. of course formatted, my hard drives are around 465 total gigs, i should still have around 415 gigs of hard drive space remaining but its saying that i only have 361-365 gigs of free space. I dont know what the problem is but i am willing to help you find out what the problem is.

EggHeadCafe.com - .NET Developer Portal of Choice
http://www.eggheadcafe.com
 
Hey Chris, check Richard's first post and turn off system restore.

Start>Control Panel>System and Maintenance>System>(look over to left side)
Click on System Protection>Click Continue when when Windows asks you for
permission>On the System Protection tab go down to where it says "Automatic
restore points and UNCHECK your drive. Click "Apply" (or "OK" if apply is not
available) all the way back out of Control Panel. Now check your hard drive
again.

Did it work? It did for me because I was having the same problem. I was up
to 112 GB used and now I'm down to 15GB used. If you do get to this point I
would do a backup to discs. I'm starting mine right now before something else
goes funny.

amaro
 
I have been experiencing the exact same thing. I had 66 gig
free.....then 40....then 20, and it got down to 6meg free. Vista was
sending out alerts that I was low on drive space. I turned off
indexing, no help. Tried many other things, no help. Eventually
turned off system restore, and bingo....back to 66 gig free. Sounds
like a bug (or is it a feature??) to me....

Darren

On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 22:41:58 -0800, Chris Morris <Chris
 
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