Hard drive nearly full!! Why??

Ok...I have a 160GB Hitachi Hard drive in my T61P. It has 9GB of free space remaining...can't be right. I have been using WinDirStat to see where all of it is and it says hard drive size 133GB?? but anyways even when i add everything up it is only like 50GB worth of stuff...but today i was messin with it and checkedthe show unknown and it says there is 82GB of Unknown...whatever that means. So i need to know what i need to do to get this Unknown where i can use it....and why it's not being used...thx guys and gals.


-Noah Brazzle

 

Run Disk Cleanup (Computer > Right-click volume icon > Properties). In the "More Options" tab, delete all but the most recent restore point.

If you've been doing a lot of system changes (ex, installing/removing programs), Windows probably created a restore point for each operation.

 

Yea...I've tried that...It didn't hardly give me anything back...

 

Damnit (feel free to swear whenever you have computer issues). What does your disk properties state? Is it the WinDirStat program that reports 82GB of "unknown"?

 

If you have Vista, all of that space has been eaten by vista. Vista continually caches and saves itself, so it uses up a lot of space in a short amount of time.
Do exactly what bog said. Run a disc cleanup and then run it again, but that time delete the restore files and that will clean up the 82gb of nonsense.

I have shown people how to do this at school and they all thank me for saving their harddrive. It is really amazing how people at a tech school do not know how to run dic cleanup. It is wonderful.
You should do it every week or so and then a disk defragment to insure maximum harddrive efficiency.

Tell us how much space you gain back.

K-TRON

 

Could it be another partition ?

Go to START-CONTROL PANEL-ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS-COMPUTER MANAGEMENT-STORAGE-DISK MANAGEMENT.

You should be able to see what it is in here. If it's a partition, and you're sure you don't need it, then format it, and use it.

 

You got a Thinkpad right? I am 99% sure what's your root cause.

It is the ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery doing backups of the laptop. It has no hook into Vista Cleanup, that's why it won'y give you much space back.

 

Vista's "Shadow Copy" gets me a lot... but I won't turn it off. It's saved my rear a few times.

 

I agree with you! You re spot on.

The OP needs to turn the feature off and delete the saved files. That should solve the problem.

 

I think they was patch on lenvo system update for useing up too much diskspace

open restore and recovery hit view all back you shound be able get rid old one they

 

It's all those videos you download!!!!

My windows directory is 13 GB

 

Sweet! Alright doing that brought me up to 42GB of space... THX A BUNCH GUYS!!!! YALL ARE GREAT!!!!

 

Lol I Mean 92gb!!!!!

 

so was it backup file or was it disk clean that fixed it?

 

it was the rescue and recovery backup file....but another question...i seem to be gettin these slowdowns when i watch videos and even when im listinin to music...its really word it just starts skippin...any ideas??? im just on myspace and lisnin to itunes....its when i like go to different pages and stuff.

 

try the pc doctor daig see what say maybe something failing also check event log I can,nt think anything top my head what av you runing maybe some background process is kill it?

 

Check your ram usage and CPU usage. Normally those are two things that can slow you up a little bit if you have too many background processes going like andyasselin mentioned. RMclock is a good program to check your CPU usage. I use a widget to check my ram usage, but there are other programs as well.
Tim

 

You've already found the bloat, but for future reference TreeSize is very useful for quickly finding where the space has gone.

John

 

My Cpu usage ia like 98% right now, but im dowloading updates ( i still dont think it should be that high)...but earlier it was around like 30% and i was still gettin the slowdowns...

 

okay what process show useing all cpu? is system update or tvhost? somelike can,nt rember name update?

tvschelder or something like that?

 

The Processes tab in Task Manager shows the CPU usage for each process. It is easy to see which process is hogging the CPU. However, it can be less easy to see what the process does (or should be doing).

John

 

Your laptop is too pwerful to skip while you click on webpages... unless you are using USB wireless dongle, than all bets are off.

I would Windows Update the laptop to latest everything and get the latest video driver from Nvidia.com

 

post listed process in taskmanger or tell us what max you cpu?

 

Alright so...at the moment...CPU usage bout 10%, Physical Memory 66%...I'm just on Firefox...Itunes lisnin to music...and msn messenger....and when i change web pages my music studders...?????

 

Are you using wireless internet? That could be why your music is flaking in and out.
I dont think it is a hardware issue, but an internet issue. I am sure that itunes runs as low priority in task manager, so maybe forcing that to high or realtime may help fix the sporadic studder.

K-TRON

 

I am using wireless...but i always have and it's never done it before. It does it to like videos on youtube and other places to until i restart my computer..

 

jdiskreport (freeware), is a great utility to see what's taking up space on your drive. As for the slow down, have you disabled the programs set to run at startup? It seems that almost every program you install tries run at startup nowadays. Lame.

 

The sound stuttering is a driver issue with your sound card.