Hard drive space?

Question

I just asked a question about this a few hours ago and since then, I have done a backup of all my personal files. My question was about my hard drive space and if I was putting too much on my hard drive. The answers I received was "you have plenty". Well, since then.. my amount of free space has dropped. My Recovery D Drive was 10% free and now's it 0% free, my C drive was 70% free and now it's 60% free and my E drive (new volume) was 100% free and now it's 90% free. Is there something that happens to my system when I backup files? I backed up all my files onto DVD+R discs. I should also mention that up to about 3 hours ago, I didn't even know how to do a backup :o

I don't know much about this stuff, could someone explain it to me? I just hope I'm not already running out of space on a 500GB hard drive. The computer is brand new.

Thanks for helpin' a clueless gal out.

Okay, for all your wondering minds thinking "how can you use that much space" -- I have plenty of home videos on here and many pictures. That's why I bought this computer to edit videos/photos. I also managed to add about 70 music albums on here. But I did add a question here a few days ago wondering if all that could take a lot from my hard drive. Everyone said it's unlikely. Read my last question, I gave more exact details about my free space (or lack of) before doing my backup.

I also checked to see if I had duplicates of files backed up, I do not.

And no, I do not download music or movies. I'm well aware of the risks of downloading such files. I run Norton and Spysweeper on a daily basis (and just ran a scan about 20 minutes ago). Everything is clear.

I don't understand?!

Answer 1

ok now,are you really sure that the os didn't save a copy or an image file of your backup files on your drives?

did you do a search typing in the filename you named your backup file?

if we can eliminate that possibility then we go to the next:

what "burning" software did you use?
most burning programs use a "buffer",a place on your disk to save temporary files for the burning process.this has to do with the difference in speed of your hard disk drive (access and seek time)and your optical drive (write speed).first your program puts some files there in the burning process so that your burner drive doesn't "run out" of data to burn.so that the burning process can go continouosly,smoothly."buffer underrun protection" means the burner will pause if the data to burn is not ready yet.modern burners are equipped with built-in storage space for this purpose,hence the "buffer" in mb (megabytes) that you read in the optical drive specifications...but it can pause only for a limited certain amount of time.because it is still basically a mechanical device with the laser lens attached to precison-geared rod,the reflector lens and stepper motors,etc.....it cannot pause forever.it has to stop and restart the burning at precisely the same point.failing to do so,even with an error of a micrometer will leave you with corrupted files or even an unreadable disc(DVD or CD)...so temporay files are first stored on your disk for this purpose,which are then and should be deleted by the program after the burning process.but some burning programs,create an image of the whole file before burning so as not to run the risk of buffer underruns (or underflow).
sometimes what happens is these programs manage to leave some files (.tmp),temporary files behind,sometimes they even "forget" or don't delete the files at all.
those files will be more or less as big as the files you just burned into your discs.

so what you can do is do a search for temporary files.

you can do this in windows by doing a search:

type in a wild card character (an asterisk) for the filename in the search bar, and tmp for the extension.

like this: *.tmp

do a system wide search,meaning include all your drives.this may take a while.

this will show you all the temporary files in your system.

another way is:

this is the longer and more painful way but it's worth the effort...:-)

open up windows explorer.
first go the - tools menu - folder options - then click on the view tab,once there you have to mark the "show hidden files and folders" option.
then,
right click on a higher directory,for exapmle "my documents",...
choose properties from the drop down menu.go to the generals tab.in there you will see the amount of space that folder occupies on your drive.are all the files in that folder legitimate?
do this one by one for every higher folder till you get to folder which seems to occupy a lot of space.
ok,when you find a folder of this big size,open up the sub folders,right click,same procedure....until you get to file that is taking up all this space.it be a long manual process.opening up folders and sub folders.

but you will,at least, find out which and what file is taking up you disk space.

oh and by the way,even the files your trash,those in the recycle bin,take up disk space unless you permanently delete them(even though it's just a small percentage of your drive,but with your 500GB disk,your recycle bin space will almost equal that of an average joe's total hard disk space...:-)
so if you don't really need those files anymore,just empty the trash.


hope that helped.cheers and good luck.

Answer 2

Sounds like .tmp or Temporary files expanded. The Auto Backup stuff takes a whipping when moving or re-arranging files and folders.
It is good you did a Backup, you have no idea how many never do and then are panic struck when the system crashes, as systems do.
http://www.langa.com/backups/backups.htm
Fred Langa has been telling people for years about Backup Routines. That is not clueless, that is something that 4 year IT Graduates learn and few implement.
Microsoft is just now starting to tell users to back up to removable media, most every Linux Distro has that in its Help! or whatever menus.
Read that by Mr. Langa, it is about 6 pages long, a very good read and explains alotta stuff that just seems odd.
Switching off Auto Backup in WinXP/Vista would have helped that not to happen, but it is backed up, data is safe, program files are safe.
Viruses happen, systems crash, power surges, if you read any news last week you saw that a Stock Exchange Puter went down, it was replaced with a Backup PC. Most home users do not need an entire PC to make a backup,just 7-8 DVD,CD-RW can do a 4g Fresh Installed System.

Answer 3

It sounds like you accidentally saved a backup of the files onto both your hard drive and a DVD+R. Do searches (In Start -> Search) of the files you recently backed up and make sure that there aren't extra of those files. You can also try doing disk cleanups to get rid of temporary files by right clicking drives and clicking on properties. Otherwise, I'm just not sure why you would be losing room on your hard drives.

Answer 4

sounds like you got a virus. A bad one. And from the sound of it.... it is in your back up files. Do you dowload music or movies? They are loaded with viruses. Dowload AVG Anti-Spyware. Here is the link and scan all your files. Make sure you run the update before you scan. http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Spyware/3000-8022_4-10610898.html?tag=lst-0-3
This program will take a few hours to run b/c it checks every single file in DETAIL. I ran it on my system and it found a virus in a music file that I had for years and never knew of. It should take care of your problem

Answer 5

Once you write onto a CD/DVD -/+ R Disc, You cant write on it again. The Computer is smart enough to tell you that the disc is sealed up so it displays 0% meaning that it cant take anymore memory. Also, You may not Delete or edit the disc.

Answer 6

Dang, how could you fill up that much? anyway, I recommend to first clean it out. Think about do I really need this. After that, don't back up. As you said, do it on a CD. If that's to small for it, get a hard drive for your computer. You will get used to it to install the hard drive ^^

Answer 7

You shouldn't lose that much space in that much amount of time, you shouldnt lose any space, unless when you are backing up the files you are creating two copies, taking up more sapce.

The stuff you really need keep, the stuff you don't trash.

Answer 8

How much stuff did you put in?

Are you using Windows Vista?

You got some spending problem if you are using most of your 500GB.

Don't panic and watch the C drive and nothing else. Be conservative on how your spend your harddrive space.

Answer 9

http://www.itechpassion.com/2014/02/best-hard-drive-space-analyzers.html