I just noticed that my home computer's hard drive is nearly full. I don't have that many files stored (my music collection is 20GB). When I look at the size of the individual folders in Windows Explorer- the C:Documents&Settings folder is the main culprit (65GB); BUT, when I look at (and add up) the size of the individual subfolders and files that are IN the Docs&Settings folder, they only add up to 20GB. Please help!
2006-08-09 02:37:08 · 16 answers · asked by Roger 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Desktops
first goto folder options and choose the system to show hidden files and folders.
get into documents and settings, you will see profiles of each and every person who is using the computer.
go into each one by one.
you will find a hidden folder called local settings
open it,
delete files from TEMP folder and Temporary Internet Files.
this will free up space. this will also show you how much space is being used by each user for his her personal folders.
PS:--- You should be a administrator before you do nething, or you will not gain access to any profile on the system
2006-08-09 02:45:40 · answer #1 · answered by Yanky 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋
The majority of respondents are correct!
1. a sudden occurrence of a filled up hard drive could be due to a virus. That is why Microsoft.com runs on 15,000 Linux computers.
2. the 'restore' image creates an image of your system, a few of those, and your drive is full! Delete the oldest ones, set the creation of new ones, so that you are in charge!
3. you could partition the drive so that the system is limited in the amount of space it can use.
4. I am buying 80Gb drives for $39 and 160 Gb drives for only a few dollars more! Prices have plummeted! Add a drive or three!
a. Make sure that you never put a hard drive on the same IDE channel/cable with DVD/CDroms that will slow down the data transfer to a crawl!
b. Get an Ultra card, if needed, but, you can ONLY put Hard Drives on them! NO DVD/CD roms.
c. If adding drives, MAKE SURE the Power Supply will provide for peak power demands upon start-up!
5. Buy an external drive case, and stick a drive on your Firewire, or USB port! Always get the seperate powered ones, as the "port powered" drives add to the load on your system!
6. you should run:
a, crapcleaner http://ccleaner.com
b. spybot S&D
c. Adaware by Lavasoft
d. shootthemessenger
e. firefox http://getfirefox.com (DHS says so!)
7. an alternative would be to do like hotmail.com, MSN.com and Microsoft.com (they run on 15,000 Linux computers, EACH!!!)
and try out http://pclinuxos.com FREE with 5,000 games, apps. programs!
PCLinuxOS, like the other 308 LiveCDroms at http://livecdlist.com boots in the CDrom, runs in the RAM disc, needs no drive, but, could be installed as a second OS (up to 23 drive partitions are easily configured!).
8. Finally, you need to realize that your drive is NOT filled with files like water fills a glass. The 'sectors' are set up as finite spaces, of say, 32Kb (FAT32) or, 4Kb (NTFS) each.
If you save an email, in NTFS, of 5 Kb, it takes up two sectors, and the remainder of the second unfilled sector never gets filled!
If you save a file of 33 Kb, in FAT32, it uses up 64KB or two sectors! Multiply this out by the 100,000 files in the Microsoft 'System', and it really bloats quickly, taking over, but, NOT using huge chunks of space! The different filesystems have different levels of efficiency.
NTFS does it the best, though severly crippled and it still trashes drives. Preference is Linux EXT3, and the independant Reiserfs, and JFS filesystems that journalize, are better, help drives run years longer before failure, but, Microsoft doesn't run with them, without serious code programming, that the majority of the world can't accomplish.
2006-08-09 03:44:45 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
A number of thoughts: cookies, spyware, virus(es) for starters. Also, maybe some of your software is set to archive the current copy of a file you're editing (so you have a reference point to back up to if you make an error) and these back-ups now need to be deleted. You could also try defragging your HD (although you'd think it would still read the correct amount of available memory, even if it's scattered in a billion different places), but search for and wipe spyware and viruses before you defrag.
2006-08-09 02:53:53 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
When that happens, what I would do is do a COMPLETE WINDOWS RE-INSTALL, because all computers are doomed to become a big clutterball after lots of use. Make sure you back up your data twice over. When your ready to install, restart your computer and pop in the installation CD so that you could perform a "new windows installation." Then, delete your old partition and use "unused space" to install your new windows XP. (or, was your computer Win XP???) If your computer is WinXP, i would recommend formatting your hard drive with NTFS (quick) because it will take only a minuite or two to format. Good Luck!
2006-08-09 02:47:13 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
once you install a clean problematicchronic on your pc wather it must be which you will installation a clean working gadget or basically conserving it as a slavechronic you will not at all see the finished quantity of the disk so subsequently your eighty gig is now seventy 4 gigs reason the 6 gigs are getting used as a gadget table or a MFT all problematic drives would desire to have a MFT to acollate the area mandatory to maintain some sort of an order of the belongings you should to put in that problematicchronic so this would suck yet its like that on all drives
2016-09-29 02:07:50 · answer #5 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
make sure you can view hidden files and do a wild card search through the directory including all child directories. When the search is finished, sort on size to find the culprit. Usually it will be some sort of log file that logs errors or activity etc.
2006-08-09 02:45:01 · answer #6 · answered by Interested Dude 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If this is something that truly happened over night then you most likely have a virus. There are indeed viruses designed to reproduce and simply take up hard drive space simply to slow down the users computer. Try scanning your computer here for free using Norton - http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/default.asp?langid=ie&venid=sym
If you just haven't checked your computer's hard drive space in a couple of weeks, that's on you. But the good news is hard drive prices both internal and external have come down drastically in price.
Try here: http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/Search.do?c=1&context=&keyword=Hard+drive&searchSection=All&go.x=0&go.y=0 , or http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp;jsessionid=K3RP2PFKHFCMVKC4D3EVAGA?id=cat12085&type=page&sc=ALL&qs=hard+drive&cp=1&sp=Relevance&mipp=25&uq=hard+drive&_requestid=18776,
Hope this helped!
2006-08-09 02:44:10 · answer #7 · answered by fidlerinc 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Try cleaning out your temporary internet files and your cookies. That can eat up a fair amount of space. Also, your recycle bin is still added in to the used space until you empty it.
2006-08-09 02:42:03 · answer #8 · answered by JordanB 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Ditto Southpaw.
2006-08-09 02:40:44 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
turn off system restore on ur hardrive...
in microsoft xp they have this feature called system restore... it is kinda like a backup which happens from time to time automatically... if u want it on u can keep it on but its necessary to keep clearing old history from it.. heres how u can do it-- select
the control panel from the start menu then click on performance and maintainance-- free up space from hardrive --- select ur mother drive and in more options click on clean up system restore upto rescent point.. simple...
or simply go to system properties if u have the 'classic view' and there u can turn off or on system restore..
2006-08-09 02:41:15 · answer #10 · answered by greenprincess 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋