space used up by something unknown

[Annied]

I have something using up a huge chunk of my hard drive - I have installed and run win dir stat and it comes up with 164 g of my hard drive space used up by something unknown. How do I find out what it is?

I have run check disk, all clean ups, virus scans etc, but clearly there is something that is using up my hard drive.

I use acronis backup to an external drive, have asked on their forums in case it is my backup writing to the hard drive instead, but no answers, and as far as I can tell it is backing up to the external drive - which incidentally is also suspiciously short of space - a 2TB drive with only 184 g free seems a bit excessive use to me.

I have attached a screen shot of windirstat - the huge yellow rectangle is my missing space.

Any ideas?

 

[solarmystic]

Hello, and welcome to the forums Annied!

Have you tried checking your System Restore Points to see how much space they may be occupying?

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/335-system-protection-change-disk-space-usage.html

Next thing you can also check is how much space Volume Shadow copies are occupying in your system, and delete the older ones if you wish:-

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/166102-shadow-copies-delete.html

 

[Annied]

Hi, Thanks for your reply - yes have checked system protection, mine is only set at 2%

ran clean up again but also checked the shadow copies, and made no difference. Think I had already done that.

Beside, since I run Acronis backup - shouldn't that mean that the windows backup doesn't run?

So none the wiser!

 

[Annied]

Anyone?? Have not got anywhere with this issue - can anyone help me?

 

[DeaconFrost]

What's listed when you hold your mouse cursor over the yellow box?

 

[Layback Bear]

First off please fill in ((My System Specs)) completely.
Was Windows a Clean Install, Up Grade. Explain how Windows 7 was installed if you know.
Use this
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/76383-disk-cleanup-extended.html
and see if their is any thing that indicates old copy or the like.

 

[Annied]

What's listed when you hold your mouse cursor over the yellow box?

the C: drive. nothing else shows up.

I tried to right click on it as one of the other threads said I could then click explorer here - but that option is greyed out.

 

[Annied]

First off please fill in ((My System Specs)) completely.
Was Windows a Clean Install, Up Grade. Explain how Windows 7 was installed if you know.
Use this
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/76383-disk-cleanup-extended.html
and see if their is any thing that indicates old copy or the like.

RE system specs - is there somewhere I can look on my computer to get all that information, I have no idea about most of it?

Windows 7 was an upgrade install after a complete reformat of the hard drive. I had to install the older version of windows to be able to use the windows 7 disk.

At the same time I started running Acronis 2012 home backup to an external drive, which made me suspect somehow Acronis has used up all this additional space.

164 g seems a lot of space for an old version of windows?

I have run the extended clean up and that gave me back about 1.7G. Still doesn't account for all the rest. Any other ideas?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Annied]

I have just run Windirstat again and now I have 169g in the unknown section - so something is still eating up the space on my hard drive.

It is using up more than I just recovered vie the extended clean up!

What else can I do to find out what is doing this?

 

[dtxx]

I would suggest Treesize Free to find the problem. TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs Also, make sure you can see all hidden files and folders.

 

[Annied]

Thanks for that - Treesize confirms my suspicion it appears Acronis - my backup program has created heaps of temporary files that are hidden.

Now the problem is - how do I find them to get rid of them, and also to stop it continually happening, as it appears to be an ongoing issue?

I'll get back onto their forum - though I got absolutely no-where with my question previously, but now I can prove it is Acronis.

 

[Layback Bear]

I think somebody posted this in #6.
Disk Cleanup : Extended
You could have a old Windows folder being saved. It can be removed using
Disk Cleanup : Extended if you decide you don't want to keep it.

 

[Annied]

I think somebody posted this in #6.
Disk Cleanup : Extended
You could have a old Windows folder being saved. It can be removed using
Disk Cleanup : Extended if you decide you don't want to keep it.

Sorry, now I am confused - in post 6 you suggested I do an extended cleanup, which I did and replied to (post 8)

Are you saying I can use disk cleanup to find the files that treesize discovered, which I have identified as my Acronis backup program temp files? (see post 11)

When I run disk clean up, it does not show any of those hidden files - even extended, and they are not old windows files - so I am not sure what you mean?

Thanks

 

[Layback Bear]

Sorry I missed that 1.7g You surely have more to find. I'm thinking.

 

[Layback Bear]

Using Windows Explorer search for unknown in computer and I think you will find them. I found mine that way but I only have 2.7 gigs.

 

[Annied]

Hi,
Searching for unknown did not show me where Acronis is hiding them. I've also tried searching using the names of some of the files, but that doesn't bring them up either.

I have just noticed I can delete from within Treesize - does any one who uses Treesize know if that is OK to do?

And secondly, how can I stop Acronis from continually doing this?

 

[Layback Bear]

Properly unhook the harness to all drives except the one Windows is on and see if unknown is still the same size. I use a little program, Search Everything. So far it has never failed finding things. Careful how you use it when deleting if you do any deleting. When it deletes something it is gone for sure. Kind of like regedit.

 

[whs]

Try with CCleaner. Maybe it deletes the files. Download CCleaner 3.21.1767 - FileHippo.com

 

[051276]

Happened to me this week

The same type of thing happened to me. I started computer up in safe mode after seeing the 185gb unknown file. In safe mode I was able to locate the file in the temp folder under windows. It looks like and error happened with my install of office and created a streamserver file that was growing bigger and bigger. I deleted it and am going to see if it pops up again then find a way to fix it, maybe uninstall office and reinstall or if all else fails redo the entire system. I know it has been a year from the time this was started but thought I'd someone else like me comes looking for an answer this may help them.

 

[Aurelien]

Nailed it!

I found a solution that may apply to your problems (it solved mine anyway).
I had this <unknown> directory listed in WinDirStat. TreeSize Free helped me understand it was files from System Volume Information files that were this big (50% of my hard drive space). Thanks for the tip btw, I found it on this thread.

So I went to Control Panel > System > System Protection
There, I clicked on Configure... and turned off System Protection.
Here you have two options: you can turn off System Protection as I did (you won't have a single recovery file anymore) OR choose less disk space usage.

Hope this helps