Windows 7: Hard Drive showing as full mysteriously

Re Post 5: Yes I have that unchecked, so there should be no hidden files. I have seen other blogs mention the 'System Volume Information' folder but I have looked at that and it isn't even 3gb.

Re post 18: Yes, but I've had it for years and never had a problem. But you never know.

Re post 13: Because it is just a patch, so doesn't it just add to the bf3 folders? I can run bf3 as admin.

Thanks for your help man. I'm still looking around on the net, nobody on bf3 forums have got back to me with similar issues.

Number 18 is a two part question. What we need to know is if you used that program to clean or optimize the registry. I am not sure how this happened but registry cleaning/optimizing/defragging became a big selling point for Windows maintenance programs bought by people wishing to speed up their computer. Granted Windows does need some maintenance however not in the registry. In reality registry cleaners don't really help a lot and quite frequently cause more problems than they solve. That's why David asked that question. IMO stay away from registry cleaners. I have seen thread after thread where people run a registry cleaner and it broke something. Granted for me a false report on space consumption would be a first, if that truly is the root cause.

[QUOTE=lazyislander;1960401]Forgot to mention this may be the ssd drive. I'm not sure what else it could be. But i have a ~64gb ssd that comes with lenovo y570.

Yeah, that would be interesting indeed. I primarily used the defrag function. It worked wonders on my old computer, but as you say I don't know why it had the registry fix function, but you couldn't skip it. So not sure if it actually did anything. It usually went through that step in about 1 second. Thanks for your input and advice.

When you ran WirDirStat (post #6), did you start it with "Run as administrator"?
If not, can you start it with "Run as administrator", and see if the space used is different?
For me, "Run as administrator" makes a difference in how much is displayed for space used...
I'm wondering if this might not explain the difference in WirDirStat vs. Windows Disk Management.

It sounds like you also have an SSD as Disk 1 that is now "Unknown/Not Initialized" and came with the Laptop.
Did the laptop come with the OS installed on this SSD, and you "re-installed" the OS on the HD?
If so, how did you "re-install" to the HD?
Why do you have an SSD that came with the Laptop and is Unknown (not used)?

WinDirStat is only recognizing C drive as 132GB. Select the Options menu dropdown and select "show unkown".

Thanks man, didn't see that option. But it doesn't exactly show you where the fat is so I can go and delete it. New pic below

Hard to imagine that they would be that large, but I'd check the size allocations for System Restore and Recycle Bin first. WinDirStat does not always properly report the size for those folders as Windows likes to "hide" that data, so it just reports it as "unknown".

But at least we now see that drive C is properly reporting it's full size.

I breezed through this thread a little bit, but just to be clear--drive C: (your SSD) is now reporting OK, but the problem remains with your storage drive?

Few questions I haven't seen, what is the make, model and speed of your drives? Also, in your BIOS, is the hard drive set for AHCI or Compatibility?

And also, you may consider checking your event logs. Type "event viewer" and hit enter in the Start search. Read through the Application and System logs to find any errors pertaining to the file system. Additionally, the logs themselves could take up a surprising amount of space. (right click the logs, and click Clear Log)

Thanks for the info, I did have tonnes of logs, I didn't really see anything that would tell em what happened, but there were thousands and thousands. I deleted them and probably got a GB free space after,maybe.

I am running a Lenovo which has been great for everything except gaming, the graphics card has given me hell and I haven't figured out what to do, but that is a different story!

ahci/compatibility how do you check that, noobish when it comes to bios and those sort of things, afraid of mashing up something.