Why is my hard drive nearly full, when the files inside are nowhere large enough?

Question

I have a 80gb hard drive and it's at 70gb full. I have hardly anything on it other than music which is 8gb. The rest are just the odd game and program files. I have opened up the hidden files and still can't see whats filling it. Can anyone help on how i can reduce whatever is clogging up the hard drive?

Answer 1

Definitely do what complex recommends. Also remember that some of the games out there are pretty large, when they don't appear they would need to be.

Go to the control panel & open Add/Remove Programs, and look at what large programs are on your computer. Uninstall things you don't need, if you need the extra room. 1,000Mb=1Gig, so anything there that has a comma in the number is pretty large.

Answer 2

Do a search and under advanced search options, look for files larger than 10000. This will show you all the large files. Once the search finishes, sort by size. The largest file should be the pagefile.sys. Look at the next largest files and see what they are. That should clue you into what is taking up all the space (replicated e-mail file, music you forgot about, etc.)

Another thing that can happen is if you have NTFS security rights set on a folder and you wont be able to see it, even on the search, but it'll take up space still. Because you don't have rights, you can't see it. Maybe somebody who uses the computer hid a bunch of porn or something?

Answer 3

Start off by using CCleaner from http://www.ccleaner.com to clear off all the temporary files from your computer, that should ditch quite a lot of memory.

If you want to track down what is taking up most of your hard drive, you should check out this program called SpaceMonger http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/v1x.php

It shows you the biggest files on your computer in a graphical style, which should let you pinpoint and delete the largest files which you may have downloaded. Some may be system files, and some may be temporary files, so make sure that you proceed with caution. :)

Big files that you should look out for, are stored in the root of your hard drive (usually the C:\ drive.) include hiberfile.sys. If you use the hibernate feature of Windows XP, then it will make this huge file that would take up a lot of your space. Another bad one is called pagefil.sys, which serves as a virtual RAM for your computer.

Take a look at this for more info http://www.cknow.com/faqs/What/HIBERFIL.SYSandPAGEFIL.SY.html

Answer 4

Perhaps your computer is not reading the drive properly. Have you been doing your doing disk cleanups and defrag? Start with Add and Remove software in the control panel. Remove any thing you dont need. Most of the newer software can be 1/2 gig or more these days. Then check in your.. My Documents. or where ever you keep your personal files. they can add up. Good Luck,
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Answer 5

No, I don't think that will work. I'm not sure why you would want to do that anyway. If possible, copy some extraneous files from the C: to the new D:, and leave C: as the boot drive.

Answer 6

To create space, delete unwanted files.Try to take backups in CDS or in an external hard drive. Delete all temp.files. I can give you a link that deals with hard drive problems. Some RAM/ hard drive problems can be easily fixed yourself by using easily available tools. I found the info at http://fixit.in useful

Answer 7

-do a defragment
- look at add remove programs
- do a disk cleanup
- and dont forget that Windows takes up about 10-15gig!

Answer 8

Well start by defragging the drive.
then clean it up under C: right click properties.
Scan for viruses Etc.

Answer 9

maybe it's spyware - try downloading ad-aware se. try going to the add/remove programs window and see what you have installed.