Where is my hard disk space going???

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Last response: April 9, 2013 8:34 PM in Windows 7

teknic111

February 25, 2011 7:15:39 PM

I have a solid state 80gb drive that I try to keep to a minimum. When I first built my computer (about 8 months ago), I easily had 40 gigs free. I haven't installed anything of significant size since, but my drive is slowly becoming full and I don't know why! Now I'm at the point where it's almost completely full!!!

BTW, recycle bin is empty!

Here is a screenshot of my drive info...Can anyone make any sense of this??

More about : hard disk space

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Ijack

Windows 7 Expert

February 25, 2011 7:25:46 PM

I would guess that System Restore Points account for at least some of this space.

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teknic111

February 25, 2011 7:34:40 PM

A valid point, but at best System Restore uses a maximum of 15% of the drive. That would only be about 12 gigs. Where did the rest go?

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teknic111

February 25, 2011 7:37:10 PM

Also, if I were to run Disk Cleanup I would only gain 1.87GB.

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Deadstick50

February 25, 2011 7:38:38 PM

What OS are you on? I know Vista has a known issue with filling up hard drives!

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teknic111

February 25, 2011 7:39:46 PM

I'm running x64 Windows 7 sp1.

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Deadstick50

February 25, 2011 7:41:43 PM

OK, haven't heard of any issue similar to Vista on 7 so no go there.......maybe more small things than you realized??

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ko888

February 25, 2011 7:41:56 PM

Maybe you should turn on Show hidden files and folders.

Is Hibernate turned on?

How much space is allocated to your page file?

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Deadstick50

February 25, 2011 7:43:40 PM

Good points there!

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Jim_L9

February 25, 2011 7:44:32 PM

Windows update files can take quite a bit of space too.

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Deadstick50

February 25, 2011 7:45:37 PM

Also keep in mind, when you formatted that drive you no longer have 80GBs.

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teknic111

February 25, 2011 7:46:00 PM

The screenshot I posted shows all hidden files and directories. Hibernate is off and total paging file size for all drives = 6135MB.

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Deadstick50

February 25, 2011 7:47:34 PM

6GBs page file??? seems big to me, how much ram are you running?

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teknic111

February 25, 2011 7:49:53 PM

I'm running 6GB of ram.

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ko888

February 25, 2011 7:52:50 PM

What about disabling the hiding of protected operating system files setting?

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penguintech

February 25, 2011 7:59:30 PM

I would run this http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/
I use it alot myself, it's very helpful in showing you exactly where all your stuff is stored so you can then go through and erase stuff you no longer need anymore i.e. temp files and such.

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Deadstick50

February 25, 2011 7:59:50 PM

Get yourself a copy of Ccleaner from download.com and have it check for extra log files and stuff you dont need.......might help

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das_stig

Windows 7 Expert

February 25, 2011 8:01:56 PM

How much space is C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution taking up, Windows Update are downloaded and stored here and sometimes don't get cleaned out, but +1 on CCLEANER.

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teknic111

February 25, 2011 8:21:43 PM

Disabling "hiding of protected operating system files" pretty much reveals the paging file and a 6gig hibernate file. That still leaves a lot of unaccounted space eaten up.

I downloaded and ran CCleaner and it will only clean up 2.5gigs.

C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution = 627 MB

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ko888

February 25, 2011 9:22:41 PM

I've used Disk Space Fan freeware disk space analysis tool for Windows utility.

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JackNaylorPE

Windows 7 Expert

February 26, 2011 2:31:37 AM

Where are you storing your user files like E-mail ? Where are your temp files being stored ?

If ya want to try an easy disk cleanup utility Steven Gould's "CleanUp" is a great tool.

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lucidica

December 4, 2012 2:44:45 PM

Take a look at the guide here: How To Check Folder Sizes
It reccomends using a tool such as WinDirStat to analyse exactly what is using up exactly how much space on your hard drive.
Hope that helps!

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omerius

December 5, 2012 10:59:52 PM

no one here even looked at your screen shot and gave you a proper answer! I have the exact same issue , did you solve it?

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drifter77

December 6, 2012 12:08:41 PM

One thought, are you using an iPhone or iPad? The things is, say you have a 16GB device, when its full and you make a backup on iTunes, it takes ~ 16GB on your hard disk. That could be part of your problem.

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omerius

December 8, 2012 9:34:46 AM

I keep a way from apple

and no I dont have any device as this connected to my computer.
thanx a lot any way

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steph h

April 9, 2013 8:34:54 PM

turn off hibernate. I had the same problem as you and this gave me ~17Gig:
administrative command prompt, type "powercfg -h off"