Space On My Primary HD Keeps Diminishing.....

[Busterbrown]

The space on my primary hard drive (C:\) keeps diminishing, day by day. It went from 111 Gig. last week
down to 70 Gig. at present.

My antivirus and anti-malware programs have found no culprits.

I'm going to try a drive-mapping program to zero in on HD space usage over the
short term--but that is a LOT of data to go through. Are there any particular areas
of my OS / HD that might stand out as likely culprits involved in diminishing HD space?

 

[oscer1]

Hi one thing you could check is how much you have set for restore points.

 

[Megahertz07]

Your disk may be dying. Backup all your data.
Run Check disk - right click on C: - Properties - Tools - Error checking - Mark both an it will run on next stat up.
If it finds bad blocks and / or clusters, your disk will die soon.
You can also boot with Win installation disk, and run chkdsk c: /r

Follow these steps to view the Check Disk (CHKDSK) results:

Open the Control Panel
Open Administrative Tools
Select Event Viewer.
In the Event Viewer expand the Windows Logs
Select the Application log.
Right Click the Application log and select Find
Type wininit in the box and click Find Next
In the middle pane click the Source/wininit line that is found.
In the south pane, you will see the complete log for the latest Check Disk (CHKDSK).

 

[DavidE]

I would run a scan of the C drive with WizTree free portable and save a screen print of the scan results.
Antibody Software - WizTree finds the files and folders using the most disk space on your hard drive

Then run it again a day later.
It should be easy to manually compare the results and see what folder(s) are using more space than before.
You can click on the + next to the folder(s) and see what files are in those folder(s) using more space.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

What antivirus are you using?

 

[Busterbrown]

I am using Avast! antivirus.

Also, I ran the SeaTools For Windows HD utility, and it reported both of my physical drives
were healthy....

 

[DavidE]

What version of Avast are you using ?

There was a problem with Avast using too much space for Restore Points, that was fixed a long time ago (many versions).

 

[Busterbrown]

What version of Avast are you using ?

There was a problem with Avast using too much space for Restore Points, that was fixed a long time ago (many versions).

Avast Premier v. 12.3.2280

I will check my Restore Points -where do I find them on my OS?

I did run a couple of Restore Points about two weeks ago....

 

[torchwood]

Hi Buster,
just go to system restore,
You can check how many by ticking show me more after opting to restore.
note your system restore size can be set by you. (max GB wise) system >> advanced >> system protection >> configure

Roy

 

[Megahertz07]

There is also an option on Disk cleanup (%windir%\system32\cleanmgr.exe) that you can delete all but the last restore points.

 

[Busterbrown]

Thanks, Mega!

 

[Busterbrown]

Your disk may be dying. Backup all your data.
Run Check disk - right click on C: - Properties - Tools - Error checking - Mark both an it will run on next stat up.
If it finds bad blocks and / or clusters, your disk will die soon.
You can also boot with Win installation disk, and run chkdsk c: /r

Follow these steps to view the Check Disk (CHKDSK) results:

Open the Control Panel
Open Administrative Tools
Select Event Viewer.
In the Event Viewer expand the Windows Logs
Select the Application log.
Right Click the Application log and select Find
Type wininit in the box and click Find Next
In the middle pane click the Source/wininit line that is found.
In the south pane, you will see the complete log for the latest Check Disk (CHKDSK).

Chkdsk didn't find any errors on Drive C....

 

[Megahertz07]

Did you find out what is claiming for your disk space?
Open disk manager and look if there is an allocated raw partition.

 

[Busterbrown]

Yes - It was old System Restore files.

I deleted them via Disk Cleanup, and Bingo! space on Drive C jumped up to 223 GB, from just 55 GB.

But that may not answer why the space on Drive C keeps diminishing on a DAILY BASIS, since I
haven't run System Restore since a couple of weeks....

 

[Megahertz07]

There are two main temp folders that you can clean
- Windows/temp - Select all files and shift+Del. Windows won't allow to delete some in use files. Press Skip
- Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp. Windows won't allow to delete some in use files. Press Skip

I also delete the files on
C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download
To delete this files you have to stop windows update service

There are also the cache files from the internet browser. The location depends witch browser you use, but they are under
Users\username\AppData\Local\?

 

[DavidE]

Yes - It was old System Restore files.

I deleted them via Disk Cleanup, and Bingo! space on Drive C jumped up to 223 GB, from just 55 GB.

But that may not answer why the space on Drive C keeps diminishing on a DAILY BASIS, since I
haven't run System Restore since a couple of weeks....

Check your max space used for system restore, and change it if needed.
Here is a tutorial:
System Protection - Change Disk Space Usage