Where is my disk space on c:

Horlock

I urgently need to free up space on c: but can't find any. Is windows really that hungry?

I've only got a 60GB sata drive (plus other drives for storage obviously)

Windows says that it is only about 56gb (sounds fair) and that I have 1.8gb left - which is a problem as it wont allow me to install updates from MS.

I've checked what I'm actually using. Total of program files (32 and 64 bit) is about 8 gb. Plus my personal files about 200mb.

Yet when I highlight everything (including hidden files) it claims to only be 48gb. So it seems to have lost 8gb (in my opinion) so can I get it back.

I should put the places I've already tried.

Virtual memory (paging file) is set to zero
System restore is set to zero
Hibernation is off (I tried this manually but I think it was never on as more than 4gb ram)
I've obviously used the clean system from system tools, and done the advanced option and removed everything from log files to errror reports. I@ve also deleted all cache from firefox and chrome.

So where is my space? And what should I do? I can't believe that windows needs that much space.




Just discovered one - potentially interesting thing. I just went to disk defragmenter to look. It is set for C: never run but apart from my other drives E:, F:, G:, and H: which report to be 0% fragmented there is also something called "system reserved" - any idea what this might be? Could this be my problem?





ARRRRGHHHHH! why does this website make you log in after you've submitted a huge message and therefore make you lose it!!!!!!!!!!

gardner1

Horlock wrote: »

I urgently need to free up space on c: but can't find any. Is windows really that hungry?

I've only got a 60GB sata drive (plus other drives for storage obviously)

Windows says that it is only about 56gb (sounds fair) and that I have 1.8gb left - which is a problem as it wont allow me to install updates from MS.

I've checked what I'm actually using. Total of program files (32 and 64 bit) is about 8 gb. Plus my personal files about 200mb.

Yet when I highlight everything (including hidden files) it claims to only be 48gb. So it seems to have lost 8gb (in my opinion) so can I get it back.

I should put the places I've already tried.

Virtual memory (paging file) is set to zero
System restore is set to zero
Hibernation is off (I tried this manually but I think it was never on as more than 4gb ram)
I've obviously used the clean system from system tools, and done the advanced option and removed everything from log files to errror reports. I@ve also deleted all cache from firefox and chrome.

So where is my space? And what should I do? I can't believe that windows needs that much space.

ARRRRGHHHHH! why does this website make you log in after you've submitted a huge message and therefore make you lose it!!!!!!!!!!

do you have photo/music/video stored on c drive if yes transfer to other media/storage

closed

http://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-finds-the-files-and-folders-using-the-most-disk-space-on-your-hard-drive/

https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download/slim

Johnmcl7

Scroll down here and download Spacemonger V1.4:

http://www.sixty-five.cc/download/

This is a free utility that runs from the exe and it shows a graphical representation of your hard drive usage and allows you to zoom into various folders to see how the space is taken up. So for example if you have a folder taken up 15GB of your 60GB drive, it will show as a quarter of the screen area and then you can zoom into the folder so it fills the screen and see where the 15GB is within the folder.

My guess would be temp or cache files left over from either program installs or Windows updates either that or log files that haven't been cleared.

John

Horlock

gardner1 wrote: »

do you have photo/music/video stored on c drive if yes transfer to other media/storage

No I don't

I've just used cccleaner and its increased my space by almost a gig so thanks for that one.

I've not tried the last link - as the software is discontinued.

Does anyone have any ideas about the 8gb discrepancy or whether this is normal for windows.

closed

use wiztree

space discrepancies can be down to the different definitions of GB used by disk manufacturers and windows, or extra partitions.

Horlock

closed wrote: »

use wiztree

space discrepancies can be down to the different definitions of GB used by disk manufacturers and windows, or extra partitions.

That this has me confused - I've just used it and it tells me that I have a pagefile.sys of 4.2gb - but I've just checked again my virtual memory and it says plainly "no paging file" (and no this isn't something I've done recently - this was how the computer was set up a year or two ago.

Can i delete the pagefile.sys ?

Interestingly, it can't be seen when I select C:

googler

Download WinDirStat and run it for a visual display of what's on your drive, what type of file each is, which folders they're in, and how big they are.

closed

yes you can delete pagefile.sys, if it will let you (it won't let you if it's really in use)

it's generally better to set a minimum size, of at least 16MB, say 64MB and a max of a few GB, and let it grow if necessary.

esuhl

Horlock wrote: »

Does anyone have any ideas about the 8gb discrepancy or whether this is normal for windows.

Computers use binary, while humans think in decimal. Traditionally, the prefixes kilo-, mega, giga-, etc. mean "1,000" (i.e 10^3), "1,000,000" (i.e. 10^6) and "1,000,000,000" (i.e. 10^9) respectively.

But in binary, these aren't round numbers. Binary uses base 2 instead of base 10, so the nearest approximations are "1,024" (2^10), "1,048,576" (2^20) and "1,073,741,824" (2^30).

In the old days, in computing, a gigabyte was always considered to be 2^30... but sneaky hard drive manufacturers realised that they could, with innocent faces, claim that "giga" means 10^9, as it generally does. That way they could legally dupe the public by misrepresenting the real capacity of the drive.

To address this, the IEC suggested (in 1998) that the binary-based prefixes should have their own names to distinguish them from their decimal counterparts. So the prefixes kibi-, mebi- and gibi- were invented.

More here:
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9829266-7.html

Avoriaz

Have you emptied your recycle bin recently?