Fluctuating Hard Drive Space

Passenger

Hi,

My Laptop HD disk space seems to be decreasing even when I free up more space on the HD by deleting files.

I haven't installed any new software or applications recently and I reboot the Laptop regularly but the HD space always seems to decrease right down to 0Mb. I reboot the Laptop and maybe 20Mb is available for a while until it's at 0 again and I have to delete more files but it happens all over again.

I have defragmented the HD which wasn't much use.

Any suggestions or solutions would be much appreciated.


Thanks.

bonzodog2

Is it Vista? I think that had a habit of eating disks. If not try checking temp folders,browser cache,recycle bin,ccleaner and defrag

Passenger

bonzodog2 wrote: »

Is it Vista? I think that had a habit of eating disks. If not try checking temp folders,browser cache,recycle bin,ccleaner and defrag

It's Windows 7.

What do you mean by checking? I've checked them but randomly deleting files that may have a relevant function may not be the best method.

Thanks.

Capt'n Midnight

don't forget the recycle bin and system volume information folders can hold deleted files and occupy up to 10% of the drive each.

shift-delete means file don't get to recycle bin

but you have to clear down the recovery info manually - personally I love the idea of a OS with an undo feature , I really miss having system restore when using linux

ED E

Vista was particularly noticeable for this, it could change by 10% through the course of a day, but you'll see some movement in 7.

There are a few things that cause this. Shadow copy will be imaging certain directories as you work and allocates space up to its set limit(10% is default I think). Windows also defrags and orders drive contents with idle time to attempt to increase performance, this may cause computed free space to change.

Lastly, and probably most relevant to you, is the page file. Its probably what would hit you for the last few megs.

Skerries

what size is the hard drive and is there stuff that you could move to an external drive?
is the hard drive partitioned?

Passenger

Thanks for the replies.

Lethal_Bullet wrote: »

Lastly, and probably most relevant to you, is the page file. Its probably what would hit you for the last few megs.

Ok, what exactly can I do to prevent this from happening?

Skerries wrote: »

what size is the hard drive and is there stuff that you could move to an external drive? is the hard drive partitioned?

The HD is 250 Gb and yes it is partitioned into C: drive a drive (Containing recovery files) and an E: drive containing a Hewlett Packard folder which has System Diagnostic files (.efi) files.

Passenger

Any new suggestions guys? I've tried a lot of things, even deleting a lot of files but the Hard Drive space eventually goes to 0.

It really would help a lot as I have to keep rebooting my Laptop every 30 mins just for programmes to run properly.

JakHicks

I'd say it's your virtual memory/paging file. If you haven't hear of it before, it's basically like extra ram that your computer uses put it's on your hardrive as oppposed to your ram.. Here's a way to change it http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/setting-up-proper-virtual-memory-windows-7-ult/8b6be428-faa1-4a72-8866-0ddc28a559de] . But to be honest, you should really delete what's taking up all the space of invest in a bigger laptop hardrive, they aren't very expensive and are easy to change

dilallio

Do a Disk cleanup.

Install and run ccCleaner. Excellent for removing crap such as temp files, IE cache files, and a lot more.

Install and run MalwareBytes - could be malware doing something.

If your drive fills up after 20 mins, the next time you boot up, disconnect it from the network, and see if it still fills up. If not it might be due to something downloading to your laptop.

You should have a minimum of 5% of your disk capacity free at all times, and preferably 10%. Otherwise defrags will take ages, and it will slow down your laptop and put the hdd under extra strain.

Do you have dropbox running - a friend of mine had a shared folder on dropbox, and one of her friends put a 1GB movie into the shared folder. Everytime she connected to a network, Dropbox started to download the file to her hdd.

Before you install anything else such as CCCleaner or MalwareBytes, try and free up as much space as possible by copying the largest files such as movies to an external drive or USB stick.

Capt'n Midnight

use spacemonger or sequoiaview to see which folders are taking up the space