Write cache location for removable storage?

stevenmu

Just wondering if anyone knows the path to where the write cache is stored for removable drives?

I was down to about 10GB on my C drive and decided to move some files (50GB worth) off to a removable hard disk. The move seemed to be running very slowly but I didn't really mind until I suddenly had 212KB left on my C drive and the move process just vanished into thin air.

I've since managed to free up plenty of space, but there's still roughly 10GB being used up for no purpose at all that I'd like to get back, if I could find where it is.

(it's not in c:\windows\temp and I can't seem to find it under c:\users\<me>)

Overheal

windirstat was built for occassions like these.

carveone

Wow, that sucks. Basic operations in windows have just been
getting worse - I don't even trust IE to download anything correctly
any more (if a problem happens, ie just pretends it didn't). I use
wget and/or curl.

The copying to a temp folder seems bizarre to me. Is this new in
Vista? I can't imagine why it would do something like this.

For copying large folders, Vista has a reputation for being appallingly
slow. It might be better to use a command line copier like xcopy
or robocopy (both are in Vista) and then remove the source
manually.

And don't forget to check:
C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Local Settings\Temp

Overheal

vista HAD a reputation for being appallingly slow and unreliable during large file transfer. SP1 fixed that situation quite well.

stevenmu

Thanks for the suggestion Overheal, that's a really cool program, it didn't do the trick but it's definitely a good thing to have.

It's actually showing less disk space being used than explorer is (windirstat:174GB used, explorer: 190GB used). I'm using Vista Home Premium so I'm going to try and enable the real Administrator account and try it again.

Wow, that sucks. Basic operations in windows have just been
getting worse - I don't even trust IE to download anything correctly
any more (if a problem happens, ie just pretends it didn't). I use
wget and/or curl.

The copying to a temp folder seems bizarre to me. Is this new in
Vista? I can't imagine why it would do something like this.

For copying large folders, Vista has a reputation for being appallingly
slow. It might be better to use a command line copier like xcopy
or robocopy (both are in Vista) and then remove the source
manually.

And don't forget to check:
C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Local Settings\Temp

The feature has been there since XP (I think, possibly 2000 as well). The idea is that by making a cache copy on a relatively fast disk it can then do the copy to a slower disk in the background (this is why you need to 'stop' removable disks before removing them, to make sure the cache has been written out). Unfortunately it doesn't seem to check if what you're copying is larger than available disk space.

The odd thing is that I have write caching disabled for the removable disk (I never use it), so it should have gone stright to it, and I've done other copies since and they did, exactly as expected.

The same thing happened me before with a windows 2003 server machine, but in that case I was able to find the cache files in the c:\documents and settings folders, but I can't now in vista. Possibly because I'm using vista home and haven't logged in as the real administrator account