Hard disk drive if getting full, but of what ??

[Guest]

Hello everybody

On my homemade system, with Win7 ultimate 64b, I have 2 drives, C: with 80GB, and D: with 1TB.
On D, I have about 500GB of files, but curiously the system shows that I have only about 5GB of free space. Where is the rest gone ?
I have removed all restore points (or at least I believe that I have), and cleaned the trash, and used ccleaner, and chkdsk, but no results so far
WinDirStat shows indeed that I have about 400GB of "unknown" files.
System restore is set to save C: on D:, but uses only about 50GB of space, so that would hardly explain for the missing GB
Even getting access to System Volume Information (there is one on D) shows nothing, since inside there is only about 150MB of files.

Has anyone any idea of how I can get a detailed view of what is eating up my disk space ? and get rid of it ?

Thanks for the help

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hello everybody

On my homemade system, with Win7 ultimate 64b, I have 2 drives, C: with 80GB, and D: with 1TB.
On D, I have about 500GB of files, but curiously the system shows that I have only about 5GB of free space. Where is the rest gone ?
I have removed all restore points (or at least I believe that I have), and cleaned the trash, and used ccleaner, and chkdsk, but no results so far
WinDirStat shows indeed that I have about 400GB of "unknown" files.
System restore is set to save C: on D:, but uses only about 50GB of space, so that would hardly explain for the missing GB
Even getting access to System Volume Information (there is one on D) shows nothing, since inside there is only about 150MB of files.

Has anyone any idea of how I can get a detailed view of what is eating up my disk space ? and get rid of it ?

Thanks for the help

Hi there,

Run CCleaner again, make sure it is cleaning the D rather than the C drive, and make sure it is removing all the temp, tmp and temp internet files.
Are you running Noton Utilities or other Norton product? One of the default settings is to save deleted files in the hidden recycle bin which can take up a tremendous amount of HDD space. You don't see the files, just that the disk space is taken up. It's easy to remove if that's the case.
Also a virus can save data to you HDD until it is filled and unuseable. Run your thorough virus scanner to make sure it is clean.
Finally, you can use a free utility like Disk Usage (Russ R's Sysinternals) or other Disk Usage App which will tell you what's using up the disk space, or even simpler, just check the properties (right click) of the folders on D:\ till you find where the other 400 GB is hiding out.

 

[Guest]

Hi there,

Run CCleaner again, make sure it is cleaning the D rather than the C drive, and make sure it is removing all the temp, tmp and temp internet files.
Are you running Noton Utilities or other Norton product? One of the default settings is to save deleted files in the hidden recycle bin which can take up a tremendous amount of HDD space. You don't see the files, just that the disk space is taken up. It's easy to remove if that's the case.
Also a virus can save data to you HDD until it is filled and unuseable. Run your thorough virus scanner to make sure it is clean.
Finally, you can use a free utility like Disk Usage (Russ R's Sysinternals) or other Disk Usage App which will tell you what's using up the disk space, or even simpler, just check the properties (right click) of the folders on D:\ till you find where the other 400 GB is hiding out.

Hello John,

Thanks for the answer

I have ran ccleaner on D, but to no avail.
I am running Kaspersky, none of the norton products. I have launched a full scan by kaspersky, no results so far, it will finish in a couple of hours.
And Disk Usage shows 550GB of files, but not the missing ones. TreeSize does not find the missing files either, it shows 550GB of files and folders, but points out that only 6GB is free, for a total of 931GB for the drive. Where is the missing data ?

Help .. ?

 

[Guest]

And DiskView (sysinternals) shows that these GB are occupied by "system files"... but no useful information so far

 

[jsphdickens]

Did you do an upgrade to Windows 7? If so, you will have a folder called Windows.Old that will have all the files that were on your C: drive. You can delete the whole thing.

 

[Guest]

Hello jsphdickens

clean install on a brand new homemade pc, so no windows.old (which would probably show anyway in a treesize scan anyway)

I am running out of ideas. What kind of system file would eat so much space ?

Anyone ?

 

[sminlal]

Not sure if this will help: http://blog.windirstat.info/20070321/unknown-again/

 

[juggy199]

Are you sure the whole 1TB is partitioned?

 

[borgak]

Found the culprit !

Answer's here : http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/security/Q-Why-does-BitLocker-Drive-Encryption-use-up-most-of-the-free-space-on-my-disk-during-encryption-.aspx

Indeed bitlocker was in the process of encrypting the drive. Found my space back once the drive fully crypted (it took 4 days !).

Problem solved.

 

[adr8767]

SOLUTION IN MY CASE

solution
-------
Simple: executed the included in Windows disk repair option. Right click on problem partition --- one of the tabs, restart as instructed, Windows repair utillity starts during reboot.

problem cause:
--------------
Installed bootmanager that made a dedicated partition. All didn't work due to known or probable factor I don't mention here.

action
------
Looked on forums. No explicit solution found. Program tree size free edition mentioned on forums several times showed the correct disk usage. Had the idea: its a partition fault.

OS
---
win 7 (probably the same in XP etc. in this case)

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey