Help Needed Cleaning Disk

[calzon65]

Hello,

I have read numerous posts about people who have said their hard drives are filled up and they don’t know what’s caused the problem. I am one of those people and after trying numerous suggestions from other posts, I am at a loss.

About a week ago, I reinstalled Windows 7/64 onto a 120GB solid state drive (formatted/partitioned during Windows install to usable space of 111GB). There are no other drives on my system and the solid state drive is formatted as a single C: drive (plus of course the hidden windows partition) and Windows is installed on it.

First I did all the usual stuff like running disk cleanup, including cleaning up system files under the More Options tabs (e.g., I cleaned System Restore and Shadow Copies). I also verified (Control Panel – System – System Protection) that my current disk usage for System Restore files is zero (I even turned off system protection). Max usage for system restore was 3% (or 3.35 GB).

I have had a few Blue Screens in the past few days and don’t know if that is relevant, but I have also run a boot up disk check. As I have 24GB of RAM, I thought the space could have been used by a memory dump file hidden from me, so I looked around for any memory dump files (*.dmp) and could not locate any. Hidden and System files are set to display.

Finally I installed and ran both TreeSize and WinDirStat to try to determine what folders might contain a large amount of storage to help me narrow my search. Here is the strange point; both programs indicated about 75GB of disk usage so that means I should have about 36GB free and earlier this morning, I had about 36GB free. Then tonight, I noticed my drive was almost full showing only about 1GB of free space when I look at the drive through Windows. So unless I am reading TreeSize incorrectly, there seems to be a conflict and I can’t figure out where to look next. I am hoping someone can help me. Here is a screenshot of TreeSize.


http://sdrv.ms/Qw7Krb

 

[richnrockville]

Calzone65, welcome to the windows 7 forum.

You seem to have plenty of memory so I would recommend not having a page file which should free up space. Also you might want to get rid of the hyberfile. Both of these hidden/system files on your C drive take up a lot of space.

powercfg.exe /hibernate off

Is how you can remove and turn off the hibernate file.

Rich

 

[whs]

Did you check your shadowstorage. The command is:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

 

[calzon65]

Some very good suggestions, thank you. Here are the results:

1) I disabled hibernate via powercfg.exe /hibernate off and that freed up some space.

2) I disabled paging that that freed up some space. By the way, I misstated, I have only 12GB of RAM but I still believe that is enough and don't need the paging file.

3) I had previously checked my shadow copy using vssadmin list shadowstorage and determined the following
Used Space: 0 B
Allocated Space: 0 B
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 3.351 GB

I am still having difficulty understanding why TreeSize now reports 53.1GB used, which on a 111GB drive should yield 57.9GB of free space, but Windows is indicating that I have 23.4GB of free space. By my calculations I am still missing 34.5GB of free space and can't "find" that missing space. I believe something is still wrong. Below is a link to an updated screenshot of TreeSize.

http://sdrv.ms/PbxnZ1

I also installed/used WinDirStat and got similar results. WinDirStat indicated I have used 51.2GB of space on my 111GB C: drive, which would indicate to me that I should have about 59.8GB free not the 23.4GB free indicated by Windows.

So in summary, the above changes did reduce some disk usage, thank you, but as that usage was reduced, TreeSize and WinDirStat both accounted for the reduced usage (e.g., the usage reported from both programs was reduced). I keep thinking that if TreeSize says I have 51.2GB of "used" space, then on my 111GB drive, I should have about 57.9GB of free space but Windows is saying I only have 23.4GB of free space. That means to me there is about 34.5GB of “missing” or “hidden” free space that I am unable to account for. Are my assumptions/calculations correct? I am interpreting TreeSize correctly?

 

[whs]

Can you post a picture of the WinDirStat results/window.

 

[calzon65]

whs, here is a screenshot of the most recent WinDirStat

http://sdrv.ms/NW95qR

 

[whs]

Hmm, there is indeed nothing unusual. And you are sure that C is 111GB - not the total disk.

 

[calzon65]

Maybe I am not reading WinDirStat correctly. When I look at the WinDirStat screen, I assume that I have used 51.2GB of available storage.

WinDirStat: http://sdrv.ms/NW95qR

But when I look at my drive properties, I see that I have used 88.8GB of available storage.

My Drive Properties: http://sdrv.ms/PjLPBN

Am I reading something wrong?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I notice that the drive properties shows that compression is enabled.

I assume the 88.8 figure would be even higher without compression.

Or is it possible that the WinDirStat 51.2 figure represents post-compression and 88.8 is without compression?

Re page file: all I have read suggests that you should still use a small one---some programs expect to find a page file of some type. I use 1 GB minimum size and 2 GB maximum size.

 

[calzon65]

Thank you ignatzatsonic for your comments.

I removed compression on my drive and here are the updated WinDirStat and Drive Properties screenshots. The effect was negligible. I still am not sure why I don't have more free drive space assuming I am reading from WinDirStat that I have only used 51.4GB of disk space out of 111GB, which means I should have about 59.6 free versus my drive properties telling me I have 22.9 free. I understand I may have some hidden files, but 36.7GB (59.6 - 22.9) of hidden files seems excessive. And wouldn't WinDirStat see/calculate hidden files anyway?

Drive Properties: http://sdrv.ms/PcnWJ1
WinDirStat: http://sdrv.ms/NWvqof

P. S. I turned paging back on but set the limits from 100MB to 1GB for now.

 

[kurteb]

windows 7 does have a good disk cleaner: to improve it, go to run, type 'cmd,' then right click on the 'cmd' that pops up to 'run as administrator' at the prompt that appears, type: cleanmgr/sagerun:1 ... this will give you many more cleaning options.

 

[kurteb]

If you have a windows.old file by chance, that runs about 22.6 gb or so, the enhanced cleaner will show it.

 

[calzon65]

Thank you kurteb. I ran disk cleaner before, with the "deeper" options, but to make sure I followed your example, I ran disk cleaner exactly as you specified (with administrator privileges from the command line). Unfortunately, there is not significant change from before; I believe I am still "missing" about 34GB of free space if I am reading Drive Properties and WinDirStat correctly.

At this point I would like to know if I am interpreting the numbers from Drive Properties and WinDirStat correctly. So could someone look at the links above to my Drive Properties and WinDirStat output and tell me if they believe I should have about 34GB more free space in addition to the 22.9GB of free space being reported in Drive Properties or am I not interpreting the numbers correctly.

P.S. the enhanced cleaner, run as you specified, automatically runs then ends when it's complete. I gives no options to select/view/etc a windows.old file.

 

[kurteb]

restore points eat space, here's a link that might help: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/129976-hard-disk-space-free-up-recover.html
i feel your pain, mine turned a 1000gb into 932gb

 

[calzon65]

Thank you kurteb I have done this already.

As I have asked, I wish to find out if I am interpreting Disk Properties and WinDirStat correctly. Am I missing about 34GB of drive space?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I remember a vaguely similar problem on this forum a year or two ago which was resolved by a command in diskpart.

I think either the "rescan" or "extend" command?

Has your disk ever been used for anything other than Windows OS? Did you buy it new?

 

[calzon65]

This is a fresh install of Windows 7/64 Premium as of about five days ago. This SSD has never been used before.

I sincerely appreciate all the suggestions at solving the problem, but before continuing, I wish to verify that I indeed have a problem.

Here is what I know at this time. I have a 120GB SSD formatted to 111GB useable space, there are no other partitions (except the hidden windows partition). The Disk Properties indicate I have a 111GB capacity drive, with 88.7GB used space and 22.9GB free space. When I run WinDirStat, I read that output to mean I have only used 51.4GB. Compared to Disk Properties telling me I have used 88.7GB, that is a difference of 37.3GB of "missing" space

So at this point and according to the output screenshots below, my question is do I actually have 37.3GB of missing space or is my interpretation of Disk Properties and WinDirStat incorrect? Based on the answer to this question, I can then proceed to look for a solution if I indeed have a problem.

Disk Properties: http://sdrv.ms/PcnWJ1
WinDirStat: http://sdrv.ms/NWvqof

 

[ignatzatsonic]

So at this point my question is do I actually have 37.3GB of missing space or is my interpretation of Disk Properties and WinDirStat incorrect?

We don't know if you have missing space.

Disk Properties and WinDirStat could both be either misleading or erroneous, irrespective of any interpretations you may have. We have seen these types of issues before.

 

[kurteb]

if you use clean [all]

Use the clean command to remove partition or volume formatting from the current in-focus disk by zeroing sectors. By default, only the MBR or GPT partitioning information and any hidden sector information on MBR disks is overwritten. If you specify the all parameter, each and every sector can be zeroed, and all data that is contained on the drive can be deleted

this is the only diskpart command i know of

A Description of the Diskpart Command-Line Utility

 

[calzon65]

Fair enough ignatzatsonic, I was just trying to determine if I actually have a problem before digging deeper.

It sounds like I should proceed assuming I do have "missing" space. Now I do realize one approach would be to erase this drive and start again. I have had a few Blue Screens since my install a few days ago; so as I first inferred in my post, that could have corrupted my drive. I would like to look into the diskpart options, as I have run out of "disk cleanup" and diskchk options.

Can you give me any guidance on perusing the diskpart option, which might be a good path to follow?