Where is my hard drive space going??

I have a 3ghz Phemon, 8gb ram and a 60gb SSD drive.
After installing Win 7 x64 my install was a bloated 20gb. This includes 8gb in the c:\windows\temp folder that I can't delete. After installing a few apps and games, I have 12gb free. I cannot account for 15gb of "missing space"
system restore is off.

any suggestions?

rosspos said:

I have a 3ghz Phemon, 8gb ram and a 60gb SSD drive.
After installing Win 7 x64 my install was a bloated 20gb. This includes 8gb in the c:\windows\temp folder that I can't delete. After installing a few apps and games, I have 12gb free. I cannot account for 15gb of "missing space"
system restore is off.

any suggestions?

Hiberfil.sys (since you have 8gb of ram, this file will be 8gb also)

If you do some googling, or search this site, you can find out how to disable it permanently.


Pagefile.sys (the swap file)
With 8gb of ram, I recommend setting it to zero.


There you have your unaccounted 15gb back.

good luck

I'm not a proponent of setting a page file to 0. But I can understand the desire to not want it very large with an SSD drive. So, if you can move it to another drive, I would do that. If not, set it to something small. Like 512MB. The reason that I like to have a pagefile is that some apps simply require it during the install. Even though with 8GB, you likely won't ever use it, the installer might insist.

I will second the use of TreeSize though to show you where space is being chewed up.

pparks1 said:

I'm not a proponent of setting a page file to 0. But I can understand the desire to not want it very large with an SSD drive. So, if you can move it to another drive, I would do that. If not, set it to something small. Like 512MB. The reason that I like to have a pagefile is that some apps simply require it during the install. Even though with 8GB, you likely won't ever use it, the installer might insist.

I will second the use of TreeSize though to show you where space is being chewed up.

Hi pparks1.

I am curious to what apps require a pagefile? Especially during install?
I don't mean that sarcastically, I really want to know, in case I come across an issue where that info could be useful.

Personally, ever since I crossed the 3gb boundary I have had zero pagefiles on all systems and never encountered any problems, and I have a ton of heavy apps running on all of them.
On the contrary, the systems perform notably better without it.
My last BSOD was on XP before SP1, and that was because of broken soundcard.


Getting rid of swap and hyberfil has become one of the first things I do after a clean install.

But I do wish to know in which cases (apps) it is unwise to do it.

greetz

rosspos said:

After installing Win 7 x64 my install was a bloated 20gb.

Another place that tends to be a space hog over time is the C:\Windows\WinSxS folder.

Unfortunately there isn't really anything we can do about it.

I once uninstalled some features through the control panel, and because of the WinSxS folder the installation actually grew in size. Totally the opposite effect than what I was aiming for...

So, lesson learned. Never uninstall Windows features in the control panel trying to free up space. Chances are you'll end up with less space than when you started, not to mention less features..

squonksc said:

I am curious to what apps require a pagefile? Especially during install?
I don't mean that sarcastically, I really want to know, in case I come across an issue where that info could be useful.

I didn't take it sarcastically, and honestly I cannot answer your question as I've always gone with a pagefile personally, since hard drive space is relatively cheap and I've never noticed a performance increase without it. I have read numerous places saying that having a page file, even if only a minimal one could be required. But that may be for older apps now that people aren't using that much.

sup3rsprt said:

Another place that tends to be a space hog over time is the C:\Windows\WinSxS folder.

I too was quite concerned over the size of this folder, until coming across this MSDN article which explains that the files really aren't consuming the space..but are rather hard links. It's worth a read for those who are curious.
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/200...isk-space.aspx

pparks1 said:

I too was quite concerned over the size of this folder

I don't concern myself with it anymore, because nothing can be done about it. This folder is required for stable operation of the system.

If it wasn't a space hog like Microsoft tries to portray in that article, I wouldn't have run out of disk space. People making backups with True Image would have smaller backups to deal with.

It's a good thing hard drives are so cheap. Although wasting disk space is still kind of pointless.

Nonetheless, it's a good article as it pertains to this topic so I will give you Rep for it.

Thanks for your help everyone. I re-installed and got rid of the pagefile. I recouped a little over 7Gigs
Running the treeview app I am seeing 6gig in system files?? dearlord!! what will I do.

I can't find hiberfil.sys

For Vista, this is the command in cmd:

powercfg.exe -h off - then press ENTER
Type exit, and then press ENTER.

I am not sure whether that works in W7 because I cannot test that in my virtual partition. But trying won't hurt.