Solved 127gb on 1tb hard drive, most hidden. What is it?

[John Corliss]

The computer has a one tb drive, checking properties in Windows Explorer says that 127gb space is currently in use. I used a freeware program "Disktective" to show the amount being used and what was using it. It also says that 127gb are in use, but only accounts for about a third of it. I ran Disk Cleanup with everything checked that could be a cause, but nothing changed. The computer runs fine, but this massive amount of unaccountable hard drive usage is alarming. Is this normal for Windows 7 and if so, can anybody tell me what's causing it? TIA.

John Corliss

 

[Pauly]

There are plenty of windows function that reserve disk space and hide it from you for example pagefile and hiberfile etc
Try a free program called windirstat it should show you where most of the space is

You could also check system restore to see how much of the drive it is using for backups, on a drive that size it inly needs to be a few percent and I suspect yours may be a lot higher, there are a few known bugs with programs like Avast AV that cause this to rise to 50% which is way to much

Control Panel>System>System Protection

 

[John Corliss]

Never mind. Once I posted that message, the forum came up with suggested related discussions. They all point towards shadowstorage recovery point backups. Or whatever they're called. I also deleted 121gb of pirated movies that my (late, he took his own life a couple of months ago but that's another story) neighbor had put on my desktop without telling me. I mean, come on. I have a Netflix account, why would I want that stuff anyway? Deleting that gob of garbage will definitely speed up AV scans and defragging. However, the 127gb used space figure I came up with was after I deleted that stuff. It was too large to go to the Recycle Bin (obviously), so it was permanently deleted. That's why I wondered why 127gb was still in use. Anyway, consider this question answered and thanks anyway.

 

[Layback Bear]

Glad you getting your system cleaned out.
Reboot and see if the changes and deletion are as they should be.

Here is another method built into Windows 7.

By Bare Foot Kid.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/76383-disk-cleanup-extended.html

Reboot again after doing this.