warning message - hard drive almost full

[Guest]

I have a 3 week old new IBM Thinkpad laptop running Win Xp SP2. It has
suddenly given a Windows error message telling me my 88GB free space on the
hard disk is almost full - just 175Mb left. I know this is totally wrong,
because I have a good idea how much data etc I have put on here.
I checked - the C drive in total actually contains 49Gb of data, including
program files. I did this check via an inbuilt Rescue/Recovery console which
will list all files on the C drive and gives total space used.
I have looked at Disk defrag, and the Analyse section shows the disk as
almost full too. I have also run the BIOS HDD checker, which indicates that
the HDD is working correctly, so I have come to the conclusion that this has
to be a Windows reporting error. I have searched the Knowledge base, and read
the various Help articles on NTFS incorrect reporting of hard disk free
space, but none of that seems to apply. I have no discrepancy in Size and
Size on Disk, for example, for any of my data, so It is not cluster size that
is the problem. Anyone got any ideas?

 

[You Know Who ~]

Mike, is it possible that the drive is split into two or more logical
drives? Also, there might be sections (such as the recycle bin) which are
not being reported as data.

 

[Guest]

No, the drive is not split. And the recycle bin is empty.
Thanks.

 

[philo]

No, the drive is not split. And the recycle bin is empty.
Thanks.

But I bet system restore is set to some insanely high level

 

[JS]

Try Disk Cleanup located under Accessories/System Tool/Disk Cleanup
Once opened the Disk Cleanup tab will show you what is consuming drive space
and you can check each option you want to clean/remove files to free up
space. Also located at the bottom of the Moe Options tab is the ability to
remove all but the most recent restore point.

Also take a look at CCleaner as a tool to remove temp files and other junk.
http://www.ccleaner.com/

JS

 

[Bill Blanton]

I have a 3 week old new IBM Thinkpad laptop running Win Xp SP2. It has
suddenly given a Windows error message telling me my 88GB free space on the
hard disk is almost full - just 175Mb left. I know this is totally wrong,
because I have a good idea how much data etc I have put on here.
I checked - the C drive in total actually contains 49Gb of data, including
program files. I did this check via an inbuilt Rescue/Recovery console which
will list all files on the C drive and gives total space used.
I have looked at Disk defrag, and the Analyse section shows the disk as
almost full too. I have also run the BIOS HDD checker, which indicates that
the HDD is working correctly, so I have come to the conclusion that this has
to be a Windows reporting error. I have searched the Knowledge base, and read
the various Help articles on NTFS incorrect reporting of hard disk free
space, but none of that seems to apply. I have no discrepancy in Size and
Size on Disk, for example, for any of my data, so It is not cluster size that
is the problem. Anyone got any ideas?

Try running chkdsk on the drive. It's a possibility that the cluster bitmap$
file, which keeps track of used/unused clusters is corrupt.

 

[Guest]

Ok - to answer all the points above - System restore is set to maximum,
10Gb, which is as it was when I bought the machine - haven't touched it, and
it clearly has not been affecting the laptop up to now.
I had already done Disk Cleanup and it showed almost nothing - 100Mb in Temp
Net files, nothing significant elsewhere.
I ran chkdsk c: and it did indeed throw up a report which said that windows
was showing free space as allocated which was not. So I ran chkdsk c:/F
which is the fix option, and it scheduled to run on startup. I restarted, and
the chkdsk ran . The report now showed no problem. However, when the system
had rebooted, I looked at My Computer and the C drive is still showing as
almost full - almost 88Gb used out of the available 88Gb. Disk Defrag/Analyse
still shows the same - almost full
The figures in the latest chkdsk report are as follows:

93040888kb total disk space
82281376kb in 98431 files
32120kb in 6602 indexes
0kb in bad sectors
277888kb in use by system
65536kb occupied by log file
10449504kb available on disk

4096 bytes in each allocation unit
23260222 total allocation units on disk
2612376 allocation untis available on disk

I have no idea if these figures are at all unusual.

 

[philo]

Ok - to answer all the points above - System restore is set to maximum,
10Gb, which is as it was when I bought the machine - haven't touched it, and
it clearly has not been affecting the laptop up to now.
I had already done Disk Cleanup and it showed almost nothing - 100Mb in Temp
Net files, nothing significant elsewhere.
I ran chkdsk c: and it did indeed throw up a report which said that windows
was showing free space as allocated which was not. So I ran chkdsk c:/F
which is the fix option, and it scheduled to run on startup. I restarted, and
the chkdsk ran . The report now showed no problem. However, when the system
had rebooted, I looked at My Computer and the C drive is still showing as
almost full - almost 88Gb used out of the available 88Gb. Disk Defrag/Analyse
still shows the same - almost full
The figures in the latest chkdsk report are as follows:

OK the report of free space being wrong is significant...
but chkdsk /f should have fixed it...so there's a real problem allright...

Since the machine is still new...you may want to contact the mfg as that's
obviously not normal...
especially for a new machine.

Only once have I seen a problems like that and it was caused by a RAM timing
issue.

If you have the ability to clock-down the machine (either CPU or RAM) try
that
and then run chkdsk /f again (or better still chkdsk /r from the repair
console)

 

[JohnO]

But I bet system restore is set to some insanely high level

We just ran some tests with filling a system partition to capacity. When you
hit the storage wall XP 'almost automatically' kills off all but the most
recent restore point. Then it runs disk cleanup. (The dialog explaining the
deletion of the res points is not clearly explained, and you don't really
get any options)

Can the sys restore be set to more than 12%? If so, how?

-John O

 

[philo]

We just ran some tests with filling a system partition to capacity. When you
hit the storage wall XP 'almost automatically' kills off all but the most
recent restore point. Then it runs disk cleanup. (The dialog explaining the
deletion of the res points is not clearly explained, and you don't really
get any options)

Can the sys restore be set to more than 12%? If so, how?

-John O

I don't know if there's any way to set the restore point any higher than
what's set on the "slider"

but I suppose you could always make the pagefile huge in order to run your
"fill" tests

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I have a 3 week old new IBM Thinkpad laptop running Win Xp SP2. It has
suddenly given a Windows error message telling me my 88GB free space on the
hard disk is almost full - just 175Mb left. I know this is totally wrong,
because I have a good idea how much data etc I have put on here.
I checked - the C drive in total actually contains 49Gb of data, including
program files. I did this check via an inbuilt Rescue/Recovery console which
will list all files on the C drive and gives total space used.
I have looked at Disk defrag, and the Analyse section shows the disk as
almost full too. I have also run the BIOS HDD checker, which indicates that
the HDD is working correctly, so I have come to the conclusion that this has
to be a Windows reporting error. I have searched the Knowledge base, and read
the various Help articles on NTFS incorrect reporting of hard disk free
space, but none of that seems to apply. I have no discrepancy in Size and
Size on Disk, for example, for any of my data, so It is not cluster size that
is the problem. Anyone got any ideas?

I see nothing in your report that shows that the cluster size isn't
the issue. Enough small files (admittedly it would take a lot of
them) could cause this behavior.

 

[philo]

I see nothing in your report that shows that the cluster size isn't
the issue. Enough small files (admittedly it would take a lot of
them) could cause this behavior.

Cluster size is rarely an issue with NTFS

of particular note was that chkdsk found errors
but chkdsk /f did not !!!


that should not happen on any machine...especially a new one!

 

[Bob Willard]

I see nothing in your report that shows that the cluster size isn't
the issue. Enough small files (admittedly it would take a lot of
them) could cause this behavior.

Cluster size is not the issue here. Since there are <100,000 files and
the cluster size is the (NTFS standard) 4KB, the max. wasted due to
cluster size is <0.5GB

 

[Guest]

Thanks to everyone for suggestions. All things considered, I decided that
this was insoluble, so I did a factory reset. All is well now again. But for
how long..... :-(