Where Are My Gigabytes Going..?

Arty71 · Feb 18, 2015

I recently built my own gaming PC with these specs;

Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 Motherboard

AMD FX8350 Black Edition 8 Core Processor

HYPER TX3 COOLER

HyperX FURY Series 16GB (2x 8GB) DDR3 1866MHz

Sapphire R9 270X 4GB 1020MHz GDDR 5 PCI Express Graphics Card

Kingston Technology 240GB Solid State Drive 2.5-inch V300 SATA 3

WD 1TB SATA lll Desktop SATA Drive - Blue

It all seems to be working well, but having loaded Windows 7 and one game onto the SSD, my gigabytes are vanishing before my eyes. I've disabled the automatic updating, have added nothing to it, but still a couple of GBs disappear every time I'm on it.

I used the analyze disk function and it said the disk was 12% defragmented. At this point it was showing 158 GB available. I ran the defragment and instead of gaining space, it went down to 150 GB available. A day later it is down to 142, yet I've added nothing, updated nothing, and all videos I've been downloading from You Tube have been going straight to my HDD.

I've looked into every folder on it and there doesn't even appear to be anything showing up. It's like it's being filled with literally 'nothing'.

I've looked at other threads with people having similar problems but can't seem to find any answers which help me.

Any ideas/advice would be greatly appreciated...at this rate my SSD is going to be full in days!

vesp3r · Feb 18, 2015

You can track the space your folders/files use on that drive, make them to show as "detailed" list and see also last time modifyed.
Try to scan the drive for viruses and if turn clean copy your files elsewhere and format it

Neur0nauT · Feb 18, 2015

Arty71 :

Download Treesize Free and scan your hard drive. This will show you what data is being used, and where. You may be able to see a particular folder/file using up all that space.

You might find a temp folder or a download cache folder has been filling up while running a program, or updating your OS. Or it could just be a pagefile utilising it.

If you find a folder that is particularly large in size, then check with a Google search if you are able to archive this, or delete it, but be careful not to delete or move any system-required files, or you might mess your OS up.

kewlkat1337 · Feb 18, 2015

Have you tried deleting all your restore points? They take alot of space, and also turn off windows update.

Arty71 · Feb 18, 2015

Thanks a lot guys, I'm looking into all these things now.

I have scanned with Malwarebytes and everything is clean, but trying to find how to show as "detailed"

I've turned off the Windows updates a few days ago but that hasn't made ny difference.I had thought updates basically wrote over the previous update so they didn't fill up your drive, but that doesn't seem to be the case..

vesp3r · Feb 18, 2015

when you open any folder look at the right upper part of the window. there should be a little button

madmatt30 · Feb 18, 2015

Don't EVER defrag a ssd mate for starters!!

As stated windows restore points can eat space - delete them.

Also set your memory paging file to your WD 1tb drive only (can grab back between 4 & 8gb)

Disable hibernation options (can eat up to 20gb)

If you need help doing those I'll post later as I'm on the mobile site at the moment.

Arty71 · Feb 18, 2015

Thanks again for all the advice...changing the hibernation settings has put it back up to 155 GB, but I think I've discovered a possible reason for such a huge loss of space...

I've been saving downloaded videos etc to my HDD, but they've still been filling up 'Downloads. which seems to still be connected to the SSD. That would certainly account for a lot of this space so I'll have to see where I can change this.

Neur0nauT · Feb 18, 2015

Arty71 :

Glad you found the source. Try Treesize, as it is great for monitoring your diskspace. I remember having a similar issue to yours, only to discover that FRAPs had been recording video into a default folder. I ended up with gigabytes of video of me on pause menus, key configs and random gameplay clips. lol

Arty71 · Feb 18, 2015

Neur0nauT :

Lol, I think I need that 'Computers for Dummies' book! I'm mechanically competent, hence the build was easy, but the software side of things I probably know less than your average 8 year old these days.

giantbucket · Feb 18, 2015

Arty71 :

right-click the Downloads folder
properties
location
move
select non-SSD drive, create folder, select it
yes to move content

brik94 · Feb 18, 2015

Arty71 :

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=insqkx&s=8

I had the same problem. I'll explain how to do it
Looking at my picture open up My Computer. Then Right click Downloads > Properties > Locations.
From here Click "Move" and re-assign your documents to your other hard drive.

Do this also for My Documents, My Pictures, Videos etc.

Arty71 · Feb 18, 2015

That's great guys, thanks a lot. That's given me quite a few gigs back, and I still have to follow up on a couple of the areas of advice.

A bit worried now that I might have damaged the SSD by defraging it, as Madmatt30 said, "Don't EVER defrag a ssd mate for starters!!"

I did think it seemed odd but didn't think the computer would allow me to do something you're not supposed to do. As I said it lost 8 GB by defraging

madmatt30 · Feb 18, 2015

You won't physically damage the ssd by defragging but its a pointless exercise.
As an ssd is nand based ,fragmentation makes no difference to seek & access times as it does with a platter drive.an ssd in use will always show heavy fragmentation even after a couple of days use from new - that's the entire nature of a ssd drive.
What defragging can do is create shadow system restore points which can't be deleted.
What you need to do is disable system restore completely ,let it delete all system restore points.
Reboot & then re-enable it if you want it running.

Arty71 · Feb 18, 2015

madmatt30 :

Thanks for that info Madmatt, relieved I've not damaged anything...

I've disabled the restore points as you suggested, and it's cleared another 26 gigabytes, so that's the free space up from 142 when I first posted, to 188 now. I'm sure there are probably still a few files which aren't needed if I knew which they were, but the great thing is it's no longer filling up

giantbucket · Feb 18, 2015

as a replacement for restore points, you can grab a system image once a month and save it to your massive 100TB hard drive. or change how much space you allow for restore points.

(i use Win8 but the below should be similar or possibly exactly the same)

open file explorer, and in an empty space right click and select Properties
along left side click Advanced System Settings
go to System Protection tab
select the C: (System) drive and click Configure
adjust the slider on the bottom to limit it to maybe 2G or 5G of space

Arty71 · Feb 18, 2015

giantbucket :

That's great thanks, just set that up with 4.47GB (2%) limit.

A very curious thing has happened with the changes I've made today. A couple of days ago I asked for help with this problem http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2540155/keyboard-problem-build.html and nothing I did fixed the problem with my symbols. After the changes I've made today, I've just discovered by accident that I have them all working with the correct keys, and have my '£' sign back, which had been missing altogether.

Looks like I've inadvertently killed two birds with one stone!

but no idea how these changes have affected the keyboard

Thanks to everyone who contributed, this is a really great community. With some time perhaps I'll be in a position to offer some help too.

madmatt30 · Feb 18, 2015

Arty71 :

well thats a nice bonus mate,regarding ssd use - it does come with experience once youve used one awhile the little tips & tricks to get the most from it & minimise wasted space.

Everything that you've experienced is fairly common to a new ssd user - To begin with everytime I got to below 100gb available I was panicking at how much space was left even though I also have 3x3tb platter drives installed in my rig too.
The I thought what the hell,Ive bought an ssd to use not brag about so its now down to 60gb ish & I use that space for video encoding/photo editing.
Literally every bit of software I really need to run off ssd is on there now so that 60gb of free space works brilliantly for me.All my games are stored on the traditional drives,I couldnt care less about initial boot times of games etc

Arty71 · Feb 18, 2015

madmatt30 :

I only have one game on it at the moment, and I'm not bothered about boot times either, but I did read somewhere that the games run faster from the SSD, but maybe that's not the case.

My old 'gaming PC' was one I bought about 4 years ago, and part of the reason I thought I'd build my own. Although it was sold as a gaming PC, I ended up putting a better graphics card in it, replacing a pretty weak PSU just to get it to run faster. One thing I noticed since building this one is Fraps now captures anything perfectly. On my old system, If I tried capturing a song from a music DVD it might capture the video, but not the audio, or both would be breaking up when I played it back. With this system I can Frap anything and it is perfect, and going straight to the HDD there's no worrying about space, and I move stuff onto an external drive anyway for long term storage, so I can keep the HDD pretty clear.

I'm guessing the HDD is going to go the way of the dinosaurs within a few years once SSDs can be made with as much capacity and the prices come down...nothing seems to stand still for very long, but I think the specs I built this thing to will outlast me.

Where Are My Gigabytes Going..?

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