What Does Vista Do With All The Disk Space?

macman

I've been looking at a laptop which is giving 'disk full' error messages. It's a Compaq Presario with 106GB on the C drive, running Vista Home Premium SP2. After running Disk Clean Up, CCleaner, and trying to defrag it, I've managed to get back about 3GB, so now only about 97% full!
I thought it might be storing loads of old Restore Points, so I've deleted all but the latest one-but it only had 3 anyway.
Have also deleted a few redundant programs, but nothing that would make a lot of difference.
All the documents have been moved off the C drive onto an external USB drive, so no huge folders of pics/videos/music filling it up.
Not a huge amount of programs installed, just MS Office and (the largest) a specialist drawing program which is about 3GB. Apart from that, there's very little on there, and nothing that would eat up 100GB. If I'm correct, Vista uses about 1GB?
So-where has all the space gone?
Is there some software I can use to analyse this a bit further, or do I just trawl around the drive looking for some large hidden files?

jacobsdaduk

macman wrote: »

I've been looking at a laptop which is giving 'disk full' error messages. It's a Compaq Presario with 106GB on the C drive, running Vista Home Premium SP2. After running Disk Clean Up, CCleaner, and trying to defrag it, I've managed to get back about 3GB, so now only about 97% full!
I thought it might be storing loads of old Restore Points, so I've deleted all but the latest one-but it only had 3 anyway.
Have also deleted a few redundant programs, but nothing that would make a lot of difference.
All the documents have been moved off the C drive onto an external USB drive, so no huge folders of pics/videos/music filling it up.
Not a huge amount of programs installed, just MS Office and (the largest) a specialist drawing program which is about 3GB. Apart from that, there's very little on there, and nothing that would eat up 100GB. If I'm correct, Vista uses about 1GB?
So-where has all the space gone?
Is there some software I can use to analyse this a bit further, or do I just trawl around the drive looking for some large hidden files?

If you're cleared the obvious areas, there must be some files stored somewhere that's you've missed. You've mentioned some specialist drawing software - is there a chance that files saved for that program and huge and stored somewhere you're no aware off? I would start by checked the size of the documents folder for all users.

There are various bits of software available that will help you locate large files. Vista does have an option.

Click Start Menu
Click Search
In the resulting window...
Click the little down arrow button under the back button
Where it says Title, click and select Size
Where it says Equals, click and select Is Greater Than
Where it says Zero, clck and Select Large or whatever size range you're
interested in

Donnie

WinDirStat

OneADay

Vista (and win 7 to a lesser degree) creates a folder called winsxs.
This folder grows and grows over time and gobbles up anything around 5gig to 8 gig of space depending on what you do on your pc.

There is some utility from microsoft to reduce the size of that folder by a couple of gig (to do with vista sp2 or sp1 I think).

EDIT:

Vista SP1 Cleanup Tool instructions.

***NOTE: After you use this cleanup tool, you will no longer be able to remove Service Pack 1, should any problems occur. Make sure that the system is stable before using.

***NOTE 2: This tool is a one-time use tool. Once it's used it will no longer work on the same installation.

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Windows\System32. Look for the file "vsp1cln.exe."

GetRealBabe

Hi

You might find this useful:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2342534,00.asp

I had the same problem when I had Vista on my laptop. Every time I turned it on the hard drive was reduced by about 2GB.

GRB

Leopard

..........................

macman

Is Steve saying "I haven't got a clue either'?

debitcardmayhem

You could try

Run CMD as administrator

cd \
dir /ash-d /s

this will show you all hidden/system files that are not directories

if use dir /ash-d /s > filelist.csv
then open that with excel/calc and do text to column and than sort on the size column will give you some idea of what hidden files are (I have 4gb of those)

Also I think you have to turn off system restore and then restart it to free up the space it used (don't forget to do a system restore point after tho :eek: )

Edit Whoops left the directory I was scanning as in the dir /ash-d Recovery /s

Leopard

macman wrote: »

Is Steve saying "I haven't got a clue either'?

John_Gray

No, "What on earth am I going to do with all that profit?"...:)

macman

John_Gray wrote: »

No, "What on earth am I going to do with all that profit?"...:)

Then he had an idea!
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