HD Space Disappearing

The Sparrow

Over the past few weeks I've noticed that my hard drive space is disappearing and I have no idea why. I've been deleting files to leave plenty of hard drive space free only for low space warnings to come up when I then try to download something else.

I have a Dell 640m that is running Vista. Today I tested it out and cleared some space and there was 4.58gb of free space. I put the computer to sleep for an hour or so and when I came back it was down to 4.47gb. Now after about twenty minutes of computer use it is down to 4.25gb.

Does anyone have any experience with this type of thing or an idea how to solve it?

NeitherJohn

Could your system be low on physical memory? It might be turning to the hard drive for virtual memory. Try restarting the computer and see does it go back up again!:)

zodac

Possibly System Restore taking large amounts of space. You can clear all checkpoints by following this.

The Sparrow

Thanks for the suggestions lads. Unfortunately neither seem to be the solution and if anything the problem has gotten worse.

First off, I cleared the shadow copy points and got an extra 2 gig or so which was great. Also, in an effort to find out whether that was the problem I limited the hard drive allocation for the shadow copy points to just 400mb. So after deleting the shadow points, I had 7.24gb of space. I used the computer for a couple of hours last night and this evening and the space had reduced to 6.90gigs. So that is a loss of 324mb but the total size of the shadow copy files is only 149mb so obviously something else is eating up HD space.

So I decided to restart the computer a few minutes ago to see if it was low on virtual memory as NeitherJohn suggested. But not only did it not restore the missing memory, I lost another 2.66gigs!!:eek: When the computer restarted the HD space was down to 4.24gigs from 6.9gb two minutes earlier.

But the really bizarre thing is that the HD space seems to be recovering. Already in the time it took to write this post it has jumped to 4.53gb.

So does anyone have any idea wtf is going on?

NeitherJohn

Interesting!

Have you any program running in the background that involves temporary files? My defrag program tends to do that.. but to a far far lesser extent than what you're experiencing (i.e mine only shifts a few hundred megabytes)

Maybe try clearing your temp folder as well.:)

The Sparrow

Yeah it is a bit bizarre. My Temporary Internet Files folder is only 717kb because I cleared it yesterday. I don't think there are any programmes running that should be using up the space.

I've ran Microsoft Security Essentials and it has found no problems.

Deano12345

The Sparrow wrote: »

Yeah it is a bit bizarre. My Temporary Internet Files folder is only 717kb because I cleared it yesterday. I don't think there are any programmes running that should be using up the space.

I've ran Microsoft Security Essentials and it has found no problems.

Its a service that runs in the backround in Vista, I cant remember what its called, Anti was talking about the other day but I cant find the thread where he said what it was called...

Let me go have a look and see if I can find the thread

TommyGun

This my very basic , do you empty recycle bin?


You can do a normal search for files over 100gb.
Or just follow where the folder are largest. Make sure all system and hidden files are showing.

Malice

I'd recommend downloading and running Space Monger. It'll give you a graphical representation of the folders on your drive. It (hopefully) will be obvious what's taking up so much space then.

The Sparrow

TommyGun wrote: »

This my very basic , do you empty recycle bin?


You can do a normal search for files over 100gb.
Or just follow where the folder are largest. Make sure all system and hidden files are showing.

Yeah I do empty it! Thanks

Malice_ wrote: »

I'd recommend downloading and running Space Monger. It'll give you a graphical representation of the folders on your drive. It (hopefully) will be obvious what's taking up so much space then.

Thanks. I'll try that now.

Overheal

This is concerning. This is the third thread I've come across with the exact same problem, AND I noticed it on my own machine when I still ran vista (now 7).

Not much you can do about it - I just reformatted regularly.

Sephiroth_dude

This currently happening to me too and its bloody annoying,one minute I have 23.6 gig and the next 16.8 gigs :eek:.