Hard Drive showing as full mysteriously

[lazyislander]

Okay so first post!

I recently went to download the new Battlefield 3 patch and I was notified that I did not have enough room. I was shocked considering I have >700 GB hard drive.

I have looked at the files with hidden files viewable and I see about 115-130 GB of files on my C drive. So have not been able to figure out where the extra fat is coming from.
I have performed Malware/Virus cans, I defrag regularly, a disk check.
I have have restored my computer to a point a couple days before, with no change. I have gone to disk clean up and deleted a couple old restore points (which I probably shouldn't have) and that cleared up about 8GB, which has since been taken back up with space in the last couple hours.

So does anybody have an idea what could be filling up my computer like crazy?
I do not store a lot of things on my computer, for example no movies/big files.
I am running a Lenovo y570 with HDD+SDD.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[lazyislander]

Additional Picture

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Post a picture of Windows Disk Management.

You could also download and run WinDirStat, which should show you what files are taking up space.

 

[DavidE]

Here is a SF Tutorial that might help you:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/129976-hard-disk-space-free-up-recover.html

 

[lazyislander]

Pic of Disk Management as advised. Thanks for the advice so far guys, will try them both out when I get home from work. Thanks !

 

[lazyislander]

WinDirStat

 

[lazyislander]

So have run Windirstat and CC Cleaner which took off and 400mb i think. But am still looking for this 550GB extra which is supposedly on my hard drive. Has anyone seen a virus or something of the sort that could do something like this ?? This si really strange, it is way to big to be made up of temporary files. Still lost

 

[HAVOC]

What's on your C: drive? What folders do you see when you first look at the drive?

I would right click each one and see how big each folder/file is then you can go from there.

 

[lazyislander]

I have. They all add up to about 130GB . I have never come near to filled up a hard drive in my life, far less one that is bigger than 700 GB. The pic below shows that the disk has about 130 GB on it, but windows is recognizing over 700gb...so interesting

 

[TheCyberMan]

Some thrird party Disk deframenter's can give funny relsults such as the reported freespace shrank to almost zero Disk Auslogics is one i think.

An uninstall usually corrects it.

But a thing to remember if that if reespace is down to less than 5GB then you are in bsod territory as as virtual memory writes to hdd do not always have enough space.

Had any bsod's relating to memory.

Could just be a program installed causing an incorrect report of freespace otherwise.

 

[HAVOC]

Have you been online to see if other BF3 users were experiencing the same issues? Can you right click the BF3 patch and choose "run as administrator"?

 

[OldBloke]

Sometimes this problem can be fixed by running a disk check (if the problem is not caused by extra real files using up space, but is caused by the file system not reporting free space correctly)

Right click the drive in Windows Explorer > Properties > Tools tab > Check Now
in the next dialog, tick "automatically fix file system errors"
It may need a reboot.

 

[lazyislander]

Thanks for the advice....I have ran the check disc function, ran it again just now just in case. No luck. Now I have less than 1 GB of free memory!! Fortunately I don't download a lot of stuff. HAVOC , i don't think i can run as admin, but if i could what would i do?? I was trying to avoid deleting bf3.....because with Barbados internet that would probably take like 2 days to get downloaded again!!! sad...i know.

 

[lazyislander]

This guy had similar problem....doesn't state what was the solution....I tried some of the recommendations http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/163304-drive-space-full-file-sizes-low.html

 

[TheCyberMan]

Have you had any bsod's i would expect them with less than 1GB of freespace?

Used any third party defragmentors if so uninstall them?

 

[townsbg]

First off you can save a few gig by disabling hibernation: How to disable and re-enable hibernation on a computer that is running Windows Since access to restore points is by default restricted it's space consumption is hard to ascertain; this is compounded by Vista's and 7's shadow copy of your documents. Perhaps you have more than Windows is reporting. That said try deleting all but the most recent restore point: Delete a restore point Also you can try resizing your page file size; 1.5 gb (1536 mb) initial size and 3 gb (3072 mb) max size should do. Change the size of virtual memory You can also change page file location: windows 7 - How can I move the page file to another physical disk location? - Super User Keep in mind that you have a lot of music and your programs folder is very large. Try uninstalling unnecessary programs.

 

[windude99]

Can you post a screenshot of all of your programs in Control Panel?

 

[lazyislander]

deleted 3rd party disk cleaner....namely advanced system care with the defrag option.
program page below

 

[lazyislander]

havent doen any big changes, but now i have an extra 9gb of free memory...so number jumping around

 

[DavidE]

In Explorer Folder Options do you have "Hide protected operating system files" unchecked?
If it is checked, uncheck it and see if it makes a difference in what files/sizes you see.

In post #5 the Disk Management screen shows a "Disk 1" as Unknown/Not initialized.
How many Hard Drives do you have installed in this PC, and what is "Disk 1"?

In Post #18 you said you uninstalled Advanced System Care.
When it was installed did you ever run it and do any registry cleaning / optimization?

In Post #13 you said you don't think you can run as Admin.
Why can't you run as Admin?
Do you have an Administrator account you can log in with?
An Administrator account may show different results due to security/permissions.