30GB Used, Unfound

P

PainInverter

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 10, 2009
Messages
145
Quick question: I have 139GB total available on my main drive (C), mostly used for games.
Currently have 79GB free, minus 30GB of what's being used is from all my games, on Steam, and Guild Wars installed separate.

That means I've 30GB on my main/system drive being taken up and I cant find where!

No other system folder has anything in it, the largest folder on my system being the "Program Files (x86)" which has my Steam folder in it.

All other files are on my storage drive (E).

Anyone have a clue as to what's up with this?
Not hard to find a folder with 30GB of stuff in it, and I'm finding nothing/there should be nothing else on my drive with that much on it.

Running Win7 64bit Home version.

Thanks.
 
Is this a prebuilt system from like Dell or HP? Sometimes they create a hidden partition with a system image of your OS for recovery options. You should be able to go into Disk Management and see all your space is in which partition.
 
This got me interested, I had like 20gb that I couldn't account for, when I turned on the view system files I found 14gb of it 6gb for the hibernation file and 8gb for the page file. I turned off hibernation and I set the pagefile to 1gb max. Freed up a ton of space but I'm not sure where the other 6gb went. Check your pagefile and hibernation.
 
Shane_c82 said:
Is this a prebuilt system from like Dell or HP? Sometimes they create a hidden partition with a system image of your OS for recovery options. You should be able to go into Disk Management and see all your space is in which partition.
Click to expand...

Nope, I build all my systems from the ground-up, and I never partition my drives.

munkle said:
This got me interested, I had like 20gb that I couldn't account for, when I turned on the view system files I found 14gb of it 6gb for the hibernation file and 8gb for the page file. I turned off hibernation and I set the pagefile to 1gb max. Freed up a ton of space but I'm not sure where the other 6gb went. Check your pagefile and hibernation.
Click to expand...

See response below...
 
Last edited:
Alright, I turned off hibernate and changed the virtual mem to 400MB min and 1024MB (1GB) max.

It seems to have taken care of 10GB worth of space, as now I have 89GB free, but that still leaves roughly 20GB unaccounted for, which I don't understand.

Is there a file I have to manually delete?

Once changing the settings, it automatically deletes the hiberfil.sys file, but what about the virtual mem?

Also, does making these changes effect performance of Win7 or any installed progs or games? Does anything need more of the virtual mem?

Thanks for the responses!
 
Last edited:
Try this program to see exactly where all your data is going:
http://sequoiaview.en.softonic.com/

There shouldn't be anything else besides what this program will show.

So if you go into your root C:/ and do Ctrl+A to select all and right click and view properties, the GB's don't add up to what you see for the C drive in My Computer?
 
you have any restore points?

those take up space and I am surprised no one mentioned them earlier
 
SpaceMonger is able to give you a visual representation of the data on your hard drive. The larger the square, the more space that folder/file takes up. Its helped me in the past track down mysterious problems like this one.

You can also check your local temp files folder; sometimes crud gets left in there (even after running the disk cleanup tool).

-Cool-
 
notarat said:
you have any restore points?

those take up space and I am surprised no one mentioned them earlier
Click to expand...

Thank you! Just cleared-out 7GB of space! Now up to 96GB[/B free, so I'm getting there.

Why didn't I remember that!? Well, glad you mentioned it!

Now, I just have to find the rest of the space that's being mysteriously used.

Cool1Net6 said:
SpaceMonger is able to give you a visual representation of the data on your hard drive. The larger the square, the more space that folder/file takes up. Its helped me in the past track down mysterious problems like this one.

You can also check your local temp files folder; sometimes crud gets left in there (even after running the disk cleanup tool).
Click to expand...

Thanks! I'll check it out and hopefully it will help me out with the rest of the space being taken up.

Edit: seems SpaceMonger only works up to XP?

SirMaster said:
Here is another useful one:
http://www.ghacks.net/2010/07/22/treesize-free-hard-drive-storage-allocation-analyzer/
Click to expand...

Again, thanks! Hopefully something helps me figure out what's being used where.

Only "issue" I'm finding is this: it's easy enough to see how large a folder is by simply mousing-over it, or searching for it and seeing the folder size, and I'm not finding any folders that are huge, with the exception of Steam, the largest folder on my system. Even the hidden system files I'm checking aren't large, if not completely empty.

But maybe one of the progs above will show something. Space has gotta be somewhere.

P.S.
Anyone hear of WinDirStat? Seems like simliar prog to SpaceMonger, but supports Win7.

P.S.S.
I've still got 13GB of space being used by something that I just cant seem to find. Temp files are empty, as far as I can tell by just looking manually. Haven't tried progs yet.
 
Last edited:
Bad sectors? Try a chkdsk.
I had two 1.5tb Seagate's 7200.11 that formatted to less than 900gb from all the bad sectors they had :rolleyes:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top