Where's me disk space gone?

[euston]

I am installing XP Pro. I am mystified to see that although the installed system should take up about 8GB, I am told that 14GB of disk space on C: has been used. I cannot find the phantom files. The pagefile is on the second drive.

XP seems to have a trick up its sleeve but I am not in on the secret.



Owzat! On ya way, back to the pavilion!

 

[euston]

OOPS!!! Well can't you tell I'm a Windows 2000 man. The extra 6GB was system restore stuff. I'm not used to this high-tech XP.

Sigh!



Owzat! On ya way, back to the pavilion!

 

[linney]

Have a read of this and the links contained in these threads.

Relocating Hard Drive Capacity and File Compression
thread779-939540

Hard Disk still full after deleting large files
thread779-1136701

 

[gbaughma]

You may also want to try Crap Cleaner.

http://www.ccleaner.com

Additionally, since your hard drive is broken into blocks (and, for example, each block may be 64K) that means that a 1K file will actually use 64K, a 65K file will actually use 128K, etc.

So, a bunch of "little" files will take up considerably more space percentage wise.

The reason for this? Your directory structure doesn't map *every* single byte. It maps it into blocks; it essentially says "The file starts at block xxxxx, read from that starting point until you get an EOF".

(OK, I know that's over-simplified, but it gets the idea)



Just my 2¢
-Cole's Law: Shredded cabbage

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com