Losing Hard Drive space

vilmacrazy · 24 Jul 2011

You can use CCleaner. try please, because advanced this new version.

SevenNerd · 24 Jul 2011

Download HD Tune Here : Download HDTunePro.exe

and make sure your HD health status reads fine. If theres any errors your drive is mosy likely failing

GeneO · 24 Jul 2011

bru said:

Britton30 said:

System Volume Information isn't included since it is not accessible. Did you disable Hibernation? Using it sometimes cause file corruptions.

Type cmd in Start Search, right click cmd, Run as Admin, then type in powercfg -h off. Reboot and check your used space. This turns hibernation off and deletes the hiberfil.sys file.

hiberfile.sys while large is also not increasing. I can delete it but that's really not what I am after.

You are saying that Sys Volume Info isn't included in TreeSize.

Is Sys Volume Info strictly restore points? Is it also true that Computer does include it and that is the difference between the 120.8GB and 149GB that I see? Would almost work except for the slight difference in numbers as explained above.

Mainly. Other volume shadow copies are put in there besides system restore. For example if you make a backup a volume shadow copy is made temporarily, it is removed after the backup.

Like I suggested earlier, it is clear your increase is from restore points and the amount it can grow is limited and under your control.

huntersforever · 24 Jul 2011

I Know Whats Taking Some Hard Drive Space, Its The Shadow Copy, is a technology included in Microsoft Windows that allows taking manual or automatic backup copies or snapshots of data. You Can Probably Stop The Service..

GeneO · 24 Jul 2011

huntersforever said:

I Know Whats Taking Some Hard Drive Space, Its The Shadow Copy, is a technology included in Microsoft Windows that allows taking manual or automatic backup copies or snapshots of data. You Can Probably Stop The Service..

Why would you do that? It is necessary for backups and restore points. The only space that can grow with volume shadow copy is restore points and that is limited by the user. This is a very good feature of Windows and you are out of hand saying turn it off to save a few GB?

Dave76 · 24 Jul 2011

Check your HDD manufacturer and run there disk check utility, run both short and long versions of the test.

If you're not sure of your HDD manufacturer D/L: SIW - System Information for Windows

For example:
Western Digital Lifeguard – Quick Test and Extended Test
Seagate SeaTools – Short Drive Self Test and Long Drive Self Test
Samsung ES tools – Drive Diagnostic test

This should be your first step.

GeneO · 24 Jul 2011

There is nothing wrong with your disk drive that is causing this. It is restore points.

Dave76 · 25 Jul 2011

bru said:

537GB free of 686GB. So that's 149GB used somewhere.

Looking at properties for the drive shows the entire drive using the 149GB (or 148GB some rounding going on).

TreeSize says C:\(OS) is 120.8GB. So that's my question where is the ~28GB? Computer shows it all accounted for on C:\(OS) but TreeSize does not.

Is it restore points? Are restore points included in the Computer's properties but not in TreeSize? That could explain it but as mentioned I have 30GB and I'm "missing" 28GB.

I'm not necessarily trying to reclaim lost space just trying to understand where it is and most importantly why I seem to be losing 1-2GB a day. And the 1-2GB a day is not going to C:\(OS) as that number (currently 120.8GB) doesn't increase by 1-2GB a day.

If the above 30GB is what your restore points are set for just wait and see if the 'Lost Space' exceeds 30GB. Should be able to see it today.
Depending on the size of your data, 1-2GB per restore point is within the expected range.

You have a lot of free space so that isn't going to cause you any problems.

Or you can reduce your system restore capacity to 15GB and see if you get the 13GB back, and then you can see if it keeps expanding.

If you don't need the space you can set it back to 30GB after you find out if this is where the space is going.

It will not do any harm testing the drive first as recommended by myself and others previously.
Better to know if your HDD is in good health than suddenly finding out wasn't, later.
It is a known fact that HDDs can and do fail at any time, even when new.

Let us know what you decide to do.

bru · 26 Jul 2011

3GB more gone in three days. According to TreeSize it did not go to C:\(OS). It did not go to System Restore. System Restore size did not increase by 3GB. This is getting concerning.

bru · 26 Jul 2011

Dave76 said:

Check your HDD manufacturer and run there disk check utility, run both short and long versions of the test.

If you're not sure of your HDD manufacturer D/L: SIW - System Information for Windows

For example:
Western Digital Lifeguard – Quick Test and Extended Test
Seagate SeaTools – Short Drive Self Test and Long Drive Self Test
Samsung ES tools – Drive Diagnostic test

This should be your first step.

I have a Seagate drive. ST3750528AS.

It seems Seagate SeaTools is not working for the internal drive. Short Drive Self Test says unavailable when I try to run it. Long Drive Self Test is not even listed under basic tests. When I try to run the Short generic it starts and says "outer scan" but neverprogresses any further.

I happen to have a Seagate external drive and the tests are available for it and the one Short self test I did passes. So why wouldn't the tool work for my internal drive? I imagine that can't be good.

The other tool posted HDTunePro.exe. Is that ok for me to download?