Disk filling up

[xwb]

I installed W7 on an empty machine with a 30Gb C partition. D is 4 Gb for swap space, and E is the rest for user space. I've moved all the my documents directories to E.

After installing, there was about 13Gb remaining. At the beginning of last week, there was 6Gb remaining but all I've done is look at emails and a few documents. Nothing has been added. Today, there is only 2Gb remaining.

I've totalled up all the visible directories on C and it only accounts for 17Gb. So where has the other 11Gb gone?

 

[vacunita]

Have you downloaded Windows updates? They'll usually be inside hidden directories. For that matter have you totaled all directories including hidden ones?

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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

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[linney]

Have you run Disk Cleanup, and looked at the "More Options" tab to cleanup old Restore Points as well as the normal Disk Cleanup options?

Physically check your Window's Temp folder too.

Do A Search for files created in the past few days in case some program has gone a bit berserk and is creating files "willy nilly". Use a wild card search phrase such as *.*, and use the date modified or date created columns. This might be helpful for Search syntax etc.


Tips for finding files

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/73106209-6df0-432a-8cb7-df5d8ce02ec61033.mspx

Windows Search.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/technicalresources/advquery.mspx

How To Resize A Partition In Windows Vista & Windows 7, using Disk Management.

http://www.winvistaclub.com/t11.html

There a number of third party tools that do the same so you might want to Google around.

 

[Nelviticus]

You might find this post from the Windows 7 engineering team interesting/useful:
Engineering Windows 7 - Disk Space

Nelviticus

 

[xwb]

If I click on a directory and get properties and it comes up with a figure, does that include hidden directories? If it does, then I can only account for 17Gb.

The disk space article is interesting but not really relevant as this is after installation - something in the OS is just eating up the space. I'm now down to 50Mb. I haven't crashed yet. The swap space and user partitions are on different drives.

 

[linney]

I feel something is writing rubbish to your hard drive due to a program error, I remember a similar post a few years ago where Norton was creating millions of .tmp files and filling up a hard drive.

See if a program like this can catch the culprit.

Process Monitor v2.8

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

Try running ChkDsk to check your drive for errors. Right-click your Drive icon/ Properties/ Tools/ Error Checking. Try it first by not checking either box (this will run it in a Read-only mode) to see if it flags any hard drive or file problems. If it does, restart it by ticking both boxes, and rerun it to allow it to attempt to fix any found problems.

 

[Nelviticus]

I'm just wondering whether Windows updates are creating a lot of restore points whilst also causing the WinSxS directory to (appear to) take up lots of space.

Here's how to delete restore points:
How to Delete the System Restore Points in Windows 7

Here's a handy app I've used before that graphically shows you what your hard drive is filled with:
SpaceSniffer

It takes a while to gather the info but it doesn't need installing, you can just run the .exe.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[Sympology]

I've seen SxS cripple a Vista machine for space.

Get Ccleaner and set it to delete old hotfix uninstaller (provided your machine is running stable).

Also uninstall any crap you don't need on there.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[Nelviticus]

I've seen SxS cripple a Vista machine for space

You should read that Windows Engineering article:

nearly every file in the WinSxS directory is a “hard link” to the physical files elsewhere on the system

Basically, deleting anything from there is a bad idea.

Nelviticus

 

[Sympology]

Yes, not on about deleting SxS files, but uninstalling software and hotfix installers reduces the amount SxS "uses".
Plus if it's an OEM build decrappifier can get rid off all the junk they stick on.
On avergae the 1st time i use ccleaner and chhose to remove hotfix uninstallers, it's easy to pull back 2gb. Biggest ever was just shy of 5gb.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[xwb]

I don't know what happened but it seems to have stabilized. It is now sitting at 7.54 Gb free. I'll try figuring out where the rest of it has gone at a later date (when the wife complains she's got no space to do anything).

 

[G0AOZ]

This may be coming late in the day...

How about running TreeSize Free? That will break down the folders and show where disk space is being used up.

http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[xwb]

It seems to have settled down now. It seems to average around 7.21Gb (I installed something since I last reported the size).

I've donloaded treesize just in case. Might be useeful elsewhere.

 

[kjv1611]

It may not be a bad idea to look under c:\Program Files and c:\Program Files (x86) and check the file size properties there JUST INCASE one program is filling up a custom database file or something. If any program keeps a log file, and never cleans/deletes it, and you have a lot of activity relating to whatever is logged, that can add up quicker than you'd ever imagine. Of course somethign like tree view will show you that.

Glary Utilities is a great all-in-one app for clean-up and such, but it also has a bunch of extra utilities built-in, including something like the treeview app... that piece is called "Disk Analysis" under "Files & Folders"

And I think Advanced System Care (another handy all-in-one app) has something similar, but I don't remember off-hand what it is.

 

[kjv1611]

Another thing you can do as an all the time cleanup is to configure CCleaner to run at startup of Windows... you can have it run, hide to the tray, and close itself after cleaning is done. If you do this, you'll practically never see it, but it'll also help keep all your temp files in check. However, I strongly suggest going through and customizing the options for what to delete.

 

[xwb]

Thanks - I'll set it up when my wife comes off her machine

 

[cmeagan656]

You say that the disk size has stabilzed. That makes me think that it may be Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) that is using up the space.

Hope this helps.

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[PRPhx]

Haven't seen this mentioned yet. How big is your page file? And have you set it up to allow windows to manage it????

You can check the virtual memory settings by opening the congtrol panel, going to the system item, open it. Then click on the Advanced System Settings. Choose Advanced, Performance, then choose Advance a second time. Look under virtual memory. Click on change. Here you can set the amount of disk space the page file (virtual memory will use). I generally set both the min and max size to twice the amount of installed RAM. You may need to reboot. You can also use your other partitions for virtual memory. Change them in the same location.

Also under the System Protection tab, you can set the amount of space used for restore (you can also delete old restore points to give you more space).

 

[xwb]

I've set up the disk as follows

C: 30Gb for Windows and utilities
D: 8Gb for paging files
E: Remainder for user areas

After installation, I switch the paging area to the D drive. That way, it never gets fragmented. I move all user areas to E so that I know that that is the only area that needs backing up. The only thing I didn't switch is where the browsers put their scratch information.

D Drive never gets used for anything except the paging file. I just set it to min 8G, max 8G and leave it at that. I've been using this scheme since Win95: works very well.

The problem was that C suddenly started filling up until there was 20Mb left. My son had dumped 2 VMs on C so I moved them to E. That cleared out about 7Gb. Now the system is stable at 7Gb free.

Problem is getting on the machine, now that it is working nicely. I suppose I could do it early in the morning but then if I hit a problem, I'll never get to work because it will be bugging me the whole day and I'll need to solve it before I go in.

 

[BadBigBen]

Things that pop to mind, that use lots of space, would include the following:

Windows Search and Indexing, sometimes it just keeps adding and adding stuff...

Office, specially Outlook, will at times blow out of proportion, .PST files grow and grow and grow, we've had a problem like this in the past here on the Forum...

as mentioned, VSS can hog disk space as well...

Restore points, just keep piling up...

HotFixes and Updates, keep the old files they replace in folders under the Windows folder, if the system is stable than these can be removed (see CCleaner)...


things you could do to free the space:

as mentioned, running CCleaner to clean out old LOG files is a start, see the above mentioning of the HotFixes and Updates as well...

then have CCleaner remove all Restore Points just leave the last two, just in case...

turn off the Windows Search and Indexing services, if you do not need them (in my case I really do not care if I can find a file in 5 ms or in a minute)...

do chek on the VSS used space... See: Warning! Volume Shadow Copy Service Sometimes Eats Excess Disk Space explains it nicely...

Do check on the Restore Points size usage... this talks about Vista should be the same for W7...
Change the Amount of Disk Space Used by System Restore in Windows Vista



Ben
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