C drive-erratic free space.

[DaveV]

My 120 gig C drive partition yesterday reported 62.4 GB free. Today I get a warning telling me free space is dangerously low.
Checking it I see 53 mb free and checking it again 5 minutes later I see 26.7 mb free. System restore is configured for 11% (13.21 GB). The other partition on this 250 gig drive is consistently reporting 69.4 GB free.
When I do a restart I get totally different numbers for that C partition such a 43 GB free and something else again an hour later.
Kaspersky has done a full scan and found nothing.
Any help will be very much appreciated.

 

[ZeshanA]

My 120 gig C drive partition yesterday reported 62.4 GB free. Today I get a warning telling me free space is dangerously low.
Checking it I see 53 mb free and checking it again 5 minutes later I see 26.7 mb free. System restore is configured for 11% (13.21 GB). The other partition on this 250 gig drive is consistently reporting 69.4 GB free.
When I do a restart I get totally different numbers for that C partition such a 43 GB free and something else again an hour later.
Kaspersky has done a full scan and found nothing.
Any help will be very much appreciated.

Hi DaveV! Welcome to SevenForums! Try doing a System Files scan. This scans all system files, checks if any are corrupted or missing and then replaces them. Open a Command Prompt (Type CMD into Start and press enter) and type in (without the quotes): "sfc /scannow" Remember the space between sfc and /scannow.

Try that and report back

ZeshanA

 

[DaveV]

Thanks for your quick reply. Just want to add for anyone else coming accross this threat, You have to right click on the CMD.EXE and run as adminstrator or you get this: "You must be an administrator running a console session in order to use the sfc utility"
OK, Verification 100% complete. "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations".
I restarted 3 times today and the variations are withing an expected range: 55.1, 54.7 and 52.3 GB free space.
The problem appears to have disappeared (for the time being?) and I have no idea what may have cleared it up.

 

[ZeshanA]

Thanks for your quick reply. Just want to add for anyone else coming accross this threat, You have to right click on the CMD.EXE and run as adminstrator or you get this: "You must be an administrator running a console session in order to use the sfc utility"
OK, Verification 100% complete. "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations".
I restarted 3 times today and the variations are withing an expected range: 55.1, 54.7 and 52.3 GB free space.
The problem appears to have disappeared (for the time being?) and I have no idea what may have cleared it up.

So this thread is Solved for now..............

ZeshanA

 

[DaveV]

Problem is back.

Disk space remained at an acceptable level for a couple of weeks but today I suddenly noticed some serious sluggishnes and then a message telling me that I'm out of free disk once again. C: drive showed only a few KB free space!!!
After a restart, free space on C: was up to 23 GB and after another restart up to 32 GB..... And now, after running for a half hour, I'm at 5.8 GB free of 120 GB. How on earth can anything fill and clear this much disk space in this short a time???:shock:

 

[TouchuvGrey]

Same issue here. Home built computer running W7x64
500 gig C drive. Three days ago i had maybe 40-50 gigs
used, now i get a low free space warning. Tried running
sfc /scannow, Tried defragging ( MyDefrag 4.27 ), still
the same issue.

 

[noobvious]

My old XP machine gave me the "dangerously low" warning a couple weeks before I got this one, and I deleted a bunch of stuff because I didn't know, after disk cleanup, what else to do. But thAt computer was 8 or 9 years old.....doesn't sound like that's the case for you guys.

 

[DaveV]

Same issue here. Home built computer running W7x64
500 gig C drive. Three days ago i had maybe 40-50 gigs
used, now i get a low free space warning. Tried running
sfc /scannow, Tried defragging ( MyDefrag 4.27 ), still
the same issue.

I'm finding this problem mentioned in several forums and have posted it in another myself. Amazing that there is NO resolution.

 

[TouchuvGrey]

Update: tried running an error check ( not that i
thought it would work, but worth trying ) no help,
still the problem. Backing up "C" to an external
hard drive now. Interested in seeing how much
space the backup takes up. i may format C and
restore from external. Certainly not my preferred
solution.

 

[noobvious]

Update: tried running an error check ( not that i
thought it would work, but worth trying ) no help,
still the problem. Backing up "C" to an external
hard drive now. Interested in seeing how much
space the backup takes up. i may format C and
restore from external. Certainly not my preferred
solution.

Good luck!

 

[TouchuvGrey]

WinDirStat shows hiberfil.sys as taking up 99.9%
of C drive. i just found THIS, it may be the answer.

 

[TouchuvGrey]

TreeSizeFree shows that Windows is taking up
390 gigs of hard drive space. WinDirStat shows
it taking up 23 gigs. ( Mods, if next comment
is unacceptable please feel free to edit it )

WTF ??

 

[TouchuvGrey]

Backup size is appx 24GB

 

[TouchuvGrey]

TreeSizeFree shows 379 windows files of appx
1 GB each. Path is C:\Windows\System32. Names
are .data, 2.data-379.data

WinDirStat shows 387.2 GB of C drive as
"unknown"

"ARRRGGGHHHH !!!!!!"

 

[TouchuvGrey]

i just deleted 380 1 GB .data files from
C:\Windows\System 32. Free space is
now 388 GB of 419 GB.

 

[DaveV]

Update: tried running an error check ( not that i
thought it would work, but worth trying ) no help,
still the problem. Backing up "C" to an external
hard drive now. Interested in seeing how much
space the backup takes up. i may format C and
restore from external. Certainly not my preferred
solution.

Saving a ghost image would probably be more telling. But then you need to see if the left over free space varies there too, which is very douptful.
Let us know what you find out.

 

[IggyAZ]

My 120 gig C drive partition yesterday reported 62.4 GB free. Today I get a warning telling me free space is dangerously low.
Checking it I see 53 mb free and checking it again 5 minutes later I see 26.7 mb free. System restore is configured for 11% (13.21 GB). The other partition on this 250 gig drive is consistently reporting 69.4 GB free.
When I do a restart I get totally different numbers for that C partition such a 43 GB free and something else again an hour later.
Kaspersky has done a full scan and found nothing.
Any help will be very much appreciated.

You should also check to see if the hybernation file in the root directory may be an issue slowing your computer down.
I have turned mine totally off which speeded up my computer especially when I shut it down. I still can put it to sleep without an issue.
Here is the DOS command to turn it off.
Access CMD prompt using Run as Admin
powercfg -h off
Just cut and paste what I wrote above with the spaces.

 

[TouchuvGrey]

My 120 gig C drive partition yesterday reported 62.4 GB free. Today I get a warning telling me free space is dangerously low.
Checking it I see 53 mb free and checking it again 5 minutes later I see 26.7 mb free. System restore is configured for 11% (13.21 GB). The other partition on this 250 gig drive is consistently reporting 69.4 GB free.
When I do a restart I get totally different numbers for that C partition such a 43 GB free and something else again an hour later.
Kaspersky has done a full scan and found nothing.
Any help will be very much appreciated.

You should also check to see if the hybernation file in the root directory may be an issue slowing your computer down.
I have turned mine totally off which speeded up my computer especially when I shut it down. I still can put it to sleep without an issue.
Here is the DOS command to turn it off.
Access CMD prompt using Run as Admin
powercfg -h off
Just cut and paste what I wrote above with the spaces.

already done, see my first post on this page. As per
previous post i now have 387 GB free space on "C"

 

[TouchuvGrey]

Computer running fine and 385 GB free space on "C"

 

[noobvious]

Computer running fine and 385 GB free space on "C"

Congrats!