Hard drive space?
Friday, December 7, 2007 by Richard Mohler | Discussion: Personal Computing
The other day I had 220 gb free space now it says 180 gb free. It's supposed to be 320 gb hard drive when I ordered it. Anyway there's no way I have 100gb's of stuff on there. Does anyone know what I can do to check things? 
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The__Goo
Reply #22 Friday, December 7, 2007 9:10 PM
Reply #22 Friday, December 7, 2007 9:10 PM
Vista takes up a huge amount of space. I did the upgrade version of Vista Home Basic on my fathers computer and with just bare minimun of XP Home and then the upgrade of Vista Home basic, it took every bit of the 40Gb harddrive he has. I ended up getting the Vista off his computer. Vista is huge. But 100GB for system restore? I think is uses about 10% maybe 20 but thats pushing it.
But then again it all adds up... It won't take long for a few programs we think as minor to add up to a large amount of space
But then again it all adds up... It won't take long for a few programs we think as minor to add up to a large amount of space
Richard Mohler
Reply #23 Friday, December 7, 2007 9:12 PM
Reply #23 Friday, December 7, 2007 9:12 PM
The guy at dell says the hard drive is alright do a virus scan..Is that possible it's just a virus?
Richard Mohler
Reply #24 Friday, December 7, 2007 9:14 PM
Reply #24 Friday, December 7, 2007 9:14 PM
Now it's down to 178gb's. I haven't done anything...
Philly0381
Reply #25 Friday, December 7, 2007 10:29 PM
Reply #25 Friday, December 7, 2007 10:29 PM
Richard, you started out saying that you were down to 180gb, then 179gb, and now 178gb. Somethings has to be writing to the HDD, is there anyway to see what is accessing the drive and possible saving data? Could it be a virus? Maybe another search of the web is in order looking for such a virus. That really doesn't make alot of sense, you not a newbee here. I find it extremely hard you would have pickup a virus, unless it came with the computer. Does Dell preloaded alot of junk programs that could be the culpret?
Richard Mohler
Reply #26 Friday, December 7, 2007 10:38 PM
Reply #26 Friday, December 7, 2007 10:38 PM
I got rid of all the stuff they put on. How would you see what's accessing the drive?
Philly0381
Reply #27 Friday, December 7, 2007 10:41 PM
Reply #27 Friday, December 7, 2007 10:41 PM
I knew I needed an answer for that question..........I wonder if task manager will show it. Vista still have that?
ShelbyGT_The_Car
Reply #28 Friday, December 7, 2007 10:56 PM
Reply #28 Friday, December 7, 2007 10:56 PM
Go to system restore for the drive and disable it!
Right click the computer and go properties and go system protection and uncheck the drive it is making restore points on. Then if you still want it back on - do a restart and go back and check the box so it will start over. If your not gona use system restore - then just leave it unchecked. The restore system for Vista make whatt is called volume shadow copy everytime you create a restore point. A shadow copy can be very large depending on what all is installed on your computer. If you do not want shadow copy - uncheck the drive that it is protecting with system restore and restart. Then the drive will revert back to just what programs and OS is installed on it.
Good luck
SGT
Right click the computer and go properties and go system protection and uncheck the drive it is making restore points on. Then if you still want it back on - do a restart and go back and check the box so it will start over. If your not gona use system restore - then just leave it unchecked. The restore system for Vista make whatt is called volume shadow copy everytime you create a restore point. A shadow copy can be very large depending on what all is installed on your computer. If you do not want shadow copy - uncheck the drive that it is protecting with system restore and restart. Then the drive will revert back to just what programs and OS is installed on it.
Good luck
SGT
Richard Mohler
Reply #29 Friday, December 7, 2007 11:32 PM
Reply #29 Friday, December 7, 2007 11:32 PM
Thanks.. The shadow copy is taking up 47gb's or something like that... Maybe that was the problem or maybe not a problem afterall...Thanks everyone..
Maybe that was the problem or maybe not a problem afterall...Thanks everyone..
Philly0381
Reply #30 Friday, December 7, 2007 11:46 PM
Reply #30 Friday, December 7, 2007 11:46 PM
All right then, now you can go get some sleep! 
Richard Mohler
Reply #31 Friday, December 7, 2007 11:52 PM
Reply #31 Friday, December 7, 2007 11:52 PM
I turned off system restore and restarted and also did a disk cleanup. Should you see the increase of 47gb's or not because I don't.. maybe a few gb's but not 47...The internal workings of a computer are way out of my league...
The__Goo
Reply #32 Saturday, December 8, 2007 1:28 AM
Reply #32 Saturday, December 8, 2007 1:28 AM
open up task manager and take a screen shot of it try to get all you can and let me take a look
Astyanax
Reply #33 Saturday, December 8, 2007 1:37 AM
Reply #33 Saturday, December 8, 2007 1:37 AM
Do you have System Recovery (System Restore) enabled? Over time that thing its very well known to take HUGE amounts of disk space.
Fuzzy Logic
Reply #34 Saturday, December 8, 2007 5:29 AM
Reply #34 Saturday, December 8, 2007 5:29 AM
As well as System Restore, check out hibernation too. If you don't use it, turn it off. The hyberfil.sys file it creates can also get quite large.
Disturbedcomputer
Reply #35 Saturday, December 8, 2007 9:51 AM
Reply #35 Saturday, December 8, 2007 9:51 AM
do you have any unallocated,space?
To see
Go to Start, Control Panel, Performance & Maintenance, Administrative Tools,Computer Management, Storage, Disk Management (Local) and to see what it shows.
note: the in red on some PC's may not be their in that case skip and proceed with (Administrative Tools)
To see
Go to Start, Control Panel, Performance & Maintenance, Administrative Tools,Computer Management, Storage, Disk Management (Local) and to see what it shows.
note: the in red on some PC's may not be their in that case skip and proceed with (Administrative Tools)
Phoon
Reply #36 Saturday, December 8, 2007 10:07 AM
Reply #36 Saturday, December 8, 2007 10:07 AM
i would be interested in seeing the results of using one of the tools we mentioned to identify the location of the large folders. We could give you more info if that were available. I personally would not disable system restore. It can be a valuable tool in the event of problems.
SirSmiley
Reply #37 Saturday, December 8, 2007 12:45 PM
Reply #37 Saturday, December 8, 2007 12:45 PM
I have to agree on not disabling system restore it's a lot easier than mucking around in the recovery console and if you do end up in the console it can help sometimes.
Also, there's a better way than disabling hibernation. Lately, I've started to degrag only the most often used files which seems to speed things up plus it's a heck of a lot quicker than doing the drive.
Also, there's a better way than disabling hibernation. Lately, I've started to degrag only the most often used files which seems to speed things up plus it's a heck of a lot quicker than doing the drive.
Richard Mohler
Reply #38 Saturday, December 8, 2007 12:59 PM
Reply #38 Saturday, December 8, 2007 12:59 PM
Did away with hibernation. Turned system restore back on after virus scan. (no viruses). Computer management says 288.04gb's 188gb's free 65%. Which tool Phoon? Goo-- Which part of task mgr? Thanks for all the help guys...
vStyler
Reply #39 Saturday, December 8, 2007 1:07 PM
Reply #39 Saturday, December 8, 2007 1:07 PM
Drivescan from Stardock is perfect for finding FileHogs.
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Reply #21 Friday, December 7, 2007 8:43 PM