hard disk space evaporated

derek27

i went and deleted a pile of useless files such as *.txt and*.000 from my hard drive taking directions from a reputable source as to what can be safely deleted. several thousand files were deleted, and a few GB of music and video files i no longer use. after rebooting my pc i checked the properties of my hard drive only to find that my available space had DECREASED by approx 3.51GB. its should have gone up of course... especially with all the bulky media files i got rid of. anyone want to hazard a guess as to wotz going on there.

i rebooted several times and checked again and same result.

do you reckon that a disk defragment operation might relocate the space i cleared and bring my free space back up?

Goodshape

What's a *.000 file?

Have you ran a virus scan recently? Sounds like you might be infected. A friend of mine's machine had the same symptoms and he found a nasty trojan.

derek27

Goodshape wrote:

What's a *.000 file?

Have you ran a virus scan recently? Sounds like you might be infected. A friend of mine's machine had the same symptoms and he found a nasty trojan.

dont know what *.000 are but there was 500+ of them in my root directory. 0KB in size but they clutter up searches... so i deleted them as per recommendations on the site i visited for info.

my antivirus is always on but i think i havn't done a live update of it in a month or more... so perhaps i'll update it now and run a check for viruses... ran full system spyware doctor scan yesterday and removed 73 problems successfully with it. i cant understand why all that space disappeared after i deleted so much from the drive.

cheers goodshape... i'll try for viruses before trying defragment... cos that takes so damn long

Tony H

download a copy of TreeSizeProfessional , it will show you exactly whats on your hard drive and where it is
http://www.jam-software.com/treesize/

feylya

Stupid question but did you empty your recycle bin?

Ginger

Silly question but did you

A) Empty the recycle bin
Turn off system restore (it could have made a restore point)

Assuming that you are using Windows and its the XP variety.

jcoote

if u have a third party recycle bin restore tool u may need to clear the protected files as well as just emptying your recycle bin

Ruu_Old

*.000 files could be a number of things, mostly likely some lost files that chkdsk found and renamed them. Don't forget to empty the c:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Temp.

gnashrr

derek27 wrote:

i went and deleted a pile of useless files such as *.txt and*.000 from my hard drive taking directions from a reputable source

.txt files really are a silent killer of hard drive space. Your source is not so reputable.

Do you use a torrent client or other P2P software? The active folder that the clients use for downloads that have been cancelled and not properly removed is often the cause of missing hard disk space. Take a look in C:\Documents and Settings\<yourwindowsusernamehere>\Application Data > you'll have to actually type Application Data into the address bar as this folder is invisible.

derek27

yeah recycle bin was emptied.

cleared temp except very recently accessed files

had that problem with P2P before... actually one file i downloaded from P2P before which was 532KB in size somehow self replicated itself 10sof1000s of times until it filled my drive... a virus of some sort. i resolved that issue. currently my P2P has nothing in any of the download folders, including incomplete downloads.

everything was ok until i deleted all the files.

i've done an update of my antivirus and am currently doin a full system scan.

i'll look into chkdsk renaming files as ruu suggested... sounds like a possible explanation.

following thevirus scan and that... i'll try disk defragment and see if that does anything.

strange though!

gnashrr

How much space are we talking about here? fitzdragon's suggestion sounds like it's worth a shot.

fitzdragon wrote:

download a copy of TreeSizeProfessional , it will show you exactly whats on your hard drive and where it is
http://www.jam-software.com/treesize/

derek27

no new system restore point has been created since the last time installed an application 2wks ago.

thanks for that link bedlam... those redundant files that no longer serve any purpose get on my rag... i'm always trying to get rid of them

that treesize program is savage. cheers fitzdragon!

layke

If there are that many .000 or .chk files you may have HDD problems.

I would try a scandisk if possible and read the results. You may have bad sectors that have been closed off.

Dampsquid

if you had so many .000 files etc, you must have had disk problems in the past, or at least file inconsistancy problems.

I had a problem like that before, where one file had a minus size, once i deleted it, my hard drive free space went down.

SorGan

not really sure what is going on with your comp but i would do some over kill here......... get ccleaner(crapcleaner) from www.freewarefiles.com it is about as safe a prog as you can get,free.
turn off system restore, scan your comp. for nastys,:mad: make a new restore point then,
and as stated above a good scan disc and defrag is in order

derek27

hi folks...
just finished running a disk defrag and the memory reappeared... 3.1GB as i had previously stated was missing.

maybe because i deleted so much stuff from so many different areas of the drive it assumed it was still stuck in those disk clusters as it always had been since put there in the first place. defrag solved that problem for future reference if anyone experiences a siomilar problem.

all the same... got some great links and a great application from the posters on this thread. thanks. ciao

L31mr0d

Just a question, how does turning off system restore free up disk space? I had it turned on, so I turned it off and it made no difference. Are there restore points saved somewhere that i'd need to delete or something.

SorGan

L31mr0d wrote:

Just a question, how does turning off system restore free up disk space? I had it turned on, so I turned it off and it made no difference. Are there restore points saved somewhere that i'd need to delete or something.

howaya , system restore(s.r.) points are a snapshot of your computer settings and all sorts of stuff. so yes they will and can take up space, a problem as well is that they can store a virus or trogen. so if you think you have one ,they should be turned off, before a scan, turning off s.r. points deletes them for good so dont worry bout that, just make sure you turn them back on, and! create a restore point, for safety, you can turn down the amount of disc space to use for points thus less points and less space taken up,

Ruu_Old

System Restore has saved me on a few occasions, I used to think very little of it and when you have to delete the restore points to free up some disk space then you really need a bigger HD.

L31mr0d

how do you set restore points?

jcoote

L31mr0d wrote:

how do you set restore points?

start/programs/accesories/system tools/system restore