space used up by something unknown

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  1. Posts : 9
    Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit
       #1

    space used up by something unknown


    I have something using up a huge chunk of my hard drive - I have installed and run win dir stat and it comes up with 164 g of my hard drive space used up by something unknown. How do I find out what it is?

    I have run check disk, all clean ups, virus scans etc, but clearly there is something that is using up my hard drive.

    I use acronis backup to an external drive, have asked on their forums in case it is my backup writing to the hard drive instead, but no answers, and as far as I can tell it is backing up to the external drive - which incidentally is also suspiciously short of space - a 2TB drive with only 184 g free seems a bit excessive use to me.

    I have attached a screen shot of windirstat - the huge yellow rectangle is my missing space.

    Any ideas?
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails space used up by something unknown-annie-screenshot-c-drive.jpg  
    Last edited by Annied; 16 Jul 2012 at 14:40. Reason: originally posted in someone elses thread who had a similar problem. Hers is resolved, mine is not.
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  2. Posts : 2,072
    Windows 7 x64 Professional SP1
       #2

    Hello, and welcome to the forums Annied!

    Have you tried checking your System Restore Points to see how much space they may be occupying?

    System Protection - Change Disk Space Usage

    Next thing you can also check is how much space Volume Shadow copies are occupying in your system, and delete the older ones if you wish:-

    Shadow Copies - Delete
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  3. Posts : 9
    Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit
    Thread Starter
       #3

    Hi, Thanks for your reply - yes have checked system protection, mine is only set at 2%

    ran clean up again but also checked the shadow copies, and made no difference. Think I had already done that.

    Beside, since I run Acronis backup - shouldn't that mean that the windows backup doesn't run?

    So none the wiser!
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  4. Posts : 9
    Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit
    Thread Starter
       #4

    Anyone?? Have not got anywhere with this issue - can anyone help me?
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  5. Posts : 5,795
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1
       #5

    What's listed when you hold your mouse cursor over the yellow box?
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  6. Posts : 25,847
    Windows 10 Pro. 64/ version 1709 Windows 7 Pro/64
       #6

    First off please fill in ((My System Specs)) completely.
    Was Windows a Clean Install, Up Grade. Explain how Windows 7 was installed if you know.
    Use this
    Disk Cleanup : Extended
    and see if their is any thing that indicates old copy or the like.
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  7. Posts : 9
    Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit
    Thread Starter
       #7

    DeaconFrost said:
    What's listed when you hold your mouse cursor over the yellow box?
    the C: drive. nothing else shows up.

    I tried to right click on it as one of the other threads said I could then click explorer here - but that option is greyed out.
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  8. Posts : 9
    Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit
    Thread Starter
       #8

    Layback Bear said:
    First off please fill in ((My System Specs)) completely.
    Was Windows a Clean Install, Up Grade. Explain how Windows 7 was installed if you know.
    Use this
    Disk Cleanup : Extended
    and see if their is any thing that indicates old copy or the like.

    RE system specs - is there somewhere I can look on my computer to get all that information, I have no idea about most of it?

    Windows 7 was an upgrade install after a complete reformat of the hard drive. I had to install the older version of windows to be able to use the windows 7 disk.

    At the same time I started running Acronis 2012 home backup to an external drive, which made me suspect somehow Acronis has used up all this additional space.

    164 g seems a lot of space for an old version of windows?

    I have run the extended clean up and that gave me back about 1.7G. Still doesn't account for all the rest. Any other ideas?

    Thanks for your help.
    Last edited by Annied; 31 Jul 2012 at 14:55.
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  9. Posts : 9
    Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit
    Thread Starter
       #9

    I have just run Windirstat again and now I have 169g in the unknown section - so something is still eating up the space on my hard drive.

    It is using up more than I just recovered vie the extended clean up!

    What else can I do to find out what is doing this?
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 18
    Windows 7 Professional
       #10

    I would suggest Treesize Free to find the problem. TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs Also, make sure you can see all hidden files and folders.
      My Computer


 
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