What ate up my disk space?

[sqlhotdog2005]

My disk drive is low on space anyway, so I was going to make a copy of my outlook.pst file before I compressed it.

Apparently, there may have been an Outlook service running (or something) because about halfway-through the copy of Outlook.pst, it stopped and told me it couldn't proceed... Not out of disk space, but something to the effect of resources needed were in use...

Anyway, I allowed the copy to stop, but now I've got about 500mb less disk space than I started with. If my copy started to put a temporary file somewhere, I can't find it. I've looked in temp folders....

Any ideas where this temp file might be?

 

[Diancecht]

Search all the hard drive for files bigger than 400Mb. There shouldn't be a bunch.

Cheers,
Dian

 

[sqlhotdog2005]

Dunno... the only file I see above 100mb is pagefile.sys... and I don't have any files hidden...

Don't know what to think...

 

[Frank4d]

SpaceMonger (Google for it) is a free utility that shows a graphical representation of the larger files on your hard drive, and the amount of space they consume relative to the other files on the drive. It is especially useful for finding really huge files that are using a lot of space. Hint: uncheck the "Free Space" button.

 

[campyracr]

You might try optimizing your pagefile.sys file:

0 Avoid having the page file on the same drive as the system files
0 Move the Pagefile off the disk that holds your system and boot partitions to another fast and dedicated hard disk.

 

[sqlhotdog2005]

Thanks for that info... I'll definitely look up SpaceMonger... and that's good advice for the pagefile (though this system only has one drive).

 

[netwalker1]

Did u make a compression with Outlook ?
Or with 3rd party applicatons - Winzip for example ?

Mohamed Farid
[green]Know Me No Pain , No Me Know Pain !!![/green]

 

[sqlhotdog2005]

I was running the Outlook compress when this happened. I still haven't determined where the (temporary) file is that is taking up all that space.

 

[netwalker1]

check this :
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\AppEvent.Evt
C:\WINDOWS\System32\config\SecEvent.Evt
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\SysEvent.Evt

C:\WINDOWS\PCHealth\HelpCtr\DataColl
C:\Documents and Settings\YourNameHere\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files AND C:\Documents and Settings\YourNameHere\Local Settings\Temporary Internet
Files\Content.IE5 and \Content.MSO




Mohamed Farid
[green]Know Me No Pain , No Me Know Pain !!![/green]

 

[sqlhotdog2005]

There IS one file that is a little suspect: C:\windows\system32\config\SOFTWARE.

That SOFTWARE file is about 42mb (not as much as I'm looking for), but it's dated the same day all this other stuff happened. Think I can remove that file?

 

[karlisi]

No, you cannot, this is one of Windows registry files. Very important file, do not try to delete this file and other files in this directory.

===
Karlis
ECDL; MCSA

 

[chipk]

Did you look in the typical Outlook pst location? Userprofile\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.

As far as space issues, if you want to free up more...I always remove old MS Updates from the Windows directory after they are a couple months old. You have to view Hidden files because they are Hidden and Compressed. Those would be the files that start with $NTUninstallKB blah blah blah.

You do have to understand the danger in this, that removing the directory means that patch cannot be uninstalled, but if it hasn't caused problems after a couple months - not a big deal.

Also, there is a directory called ServicePackFiles in your Windows dir that contains an entire i386 directory from the Service Pack or original installation. If you have your OS/SP disks available, it's not a problem to remove this directory.

Also, do a search for .dmp, .dbg, and of course .tmp files. All these can be removed unless they are currently in use.