Where the heck did all my harddrive space go??

K

Kitt2003

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 24, 2003
Messages
441
I came home from school to see that I got a low disk space notification, so I check My Computer and see I have 90MB of free space left on C: (14GB capacity - its a partition used only for windows and a few progs). So I clear all my temp files, clear restore points, do disk cleanup, and now I only have 800MB of space. I viewed the properties of my Documents folder, my Windows folder, and my Program files folder, and they dont even add up to anything near 14GB.

Any ideas?
 
Kitt2003 said:
I came home from school to see that I got a low disk space notification, so I check My Computer and see I have 90MB of free space left on C: (14GB capacity - its a partition used only for windows and a few progs). So I clear all my temp files, clear restore points, do disk cleanup, and now I only have 800MB of space. I viewed the properties of my Documents folder, my Windows folder, and my Program files folder, and they dont even add up to anything near 14GB.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

I would re-install windows with a new Password.

Two things could have happend here:
1. Someone used your ocmputer while you were away ( I would checkyour Local Network and make sure you don't have any mysterious new shared folders)
2. Or your computer has been compromised externally. (you could waste your time trying to use all sorts of anti-spyware, anti-trojan, anti-virus software, but re-installing windows is the only way to be sure, and I mean re-format, not just overinstall)
 
Chance #1 would never happen since I'm on a network with my family and my brother and sister know what to do and what not to do with my computer.

Chance #2 is possible but I'm gonna wait to resintall windows. I'll keep that as a last resort. Thanks though


anything else?
 
Assuming that you're running XP, do you have System Restore set to maximum amount of disk space?

gl
 
Hmm, I just checked and yea, it's set to the max. 12% which is 1723MB. Was thath the problem the whole time though? That I come home from school and see I have low disk space? I'd have no problem putting that to the min though.

Maybe choose the middle. You want to be on the safe side. There might come a day when restore will come in handy.

In the meantime yes, max is reserving disk space for restore. Middle way is fine.

gl:)
 
Kitt

Did you see my reply with-in your last post? I didn't mean to put it there.:)
 
Papa-Ming said:
Kitt

Did you see my reply with-in your last post? I didn't mean to put it there.:)
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haha thanks Ming, I wouldn't have caught that at all. :)
 
Well the most I can get out of it is 1.3GB. I dont know what the heck happened.
 
Kitt2003 said:
Chance #1 would never happen since I'm on a network with my family and my brother and sister know what to do and what not to do with my computer.
Click to expand...

You must be rather gullible or very trusting, I am not sure. Never say never...
UNLESS, the rest of your family has very little interest in computing, but even if they have the slightest inclination... I mean come on! Don't you and your brother ever get in a fight? Do you or your family ever play pranks on each other? Does your dad have a stash of pr0n on his machine that might have been discovered and moved so the wifey doesn't find out? Most of the time you can say a person is predictable, but the key here is PEOPLE (plural of person, if you don't get my drift) are UNPREDICTABLE (in this type of circumstance).

Anyway, I used to share folders on peeps computers all the friggin time (in the dorms when i was in college). Alot of them were my buds (thats why I was in their room in the first place). I never told them that I did this, but they never noticed anyway cause 90% of the world population is rather ignorant.

I wouldn't rule out other people if I were you. Man I remember opening up one of my servers one day to find a Potato (jacked frmo the dining commons) just sitting in the bottom of the case. It must have been like MONTH AND MONTHS old, I dunno you could barely recognize it as a gigantic ball of fuzz ( i coulda sworn i saw it moving...).
 
LOL a potato.

Anyways, the reason I'm so trusting right now is because no one in my family knows how to do that. hahah. but yea, i see what you mean.
 
I can't believe you'd never notice a rotten potato. Those things stink soooo much, worse than rotten eggs or rotting flesh imo.

Btw, I think it was Maximum PC that had this program on one of their discs about a year ago, but it was a handy thing that showed your windows folders as blocks, drawn to scale according to how much disc space each one used. So you could open it up and see that(in my case) Neverwinter Nights took up about 3x as much space as the next largest file on my system. I completely forgot the name of the program, but search google broadly, ask about it on a couple forums, and you should be able to find the thing. Even if you solve your problem some other way, it's a nice way to keep your hdd clean of junk that'll pile up(i.e. old pornos that you've gotten bored with, but haven't deleted from their hidden folders :p )
 
That program was called Space Monger, and you can get it here.

I use it all the time. You'd be amazed at the stuff you forget you have.
 
Andrew_Carr said:
(i.e. old pornos that you've gotten bored with, but haven't deleted from their hidden folders :p )
Click to expand...

My god..... I completely forgot about those. :D Nah jk, but thanks guys, I'm gonna test that prog out now
 
Ok, so I just checked out my C: and all the files on the drive add up to 6.2GB out of the total 14GB. Another big block shows hyberfil.sys, which is taking up 0.5GB and pagefile.sys which is taking up 0.7GB. Now here's where I'm confused. That adds up to nowhere near the 13GB windows says is being used.

I ran Chkdsk and nothing was fixed. I'll try that again.

EDIT: K, I got rid of hyberfil.sys by disabling hybernation (never used it). Now I have an extra 512MB of hard drive space....eh.
 
Compression 4tw, well not really...

Try defragging. I doubt it'll do anything for your problem. But it's a good excuse to clean things up :)
 
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