The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    3.3 gig of unknown?

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by red123, Feb 22, 2009.

  1. red123

    red123 Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    125
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I just ran WinDirStat and noticed that there is an unknown file that takes up 3.3 gig. I cannot open it or even locate it nor do I know how to delete it. It just say <Unknown>. Does anyone know if this is an important file or a way to delete it?
     
    red123, Feb 22, 2009
    #1
  2. Wishmaker

    Wishmaker BBQ Expert

    Reputations:
    379
    Messages:
    1,848
    Likes Received:
    35
    Trophy Points:
    66
    It would help if you would give us...The OS, maybe?
     
    Wishmaker, Feb 22, 2009
    #2
  3. Budding

    Budding Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    1,686
    Messages:
    3,982
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
    Probably the page file. Or maybe the shadow recovery volume.
     
    Budding, Feb 22, 2009
    #3
  4. Carrot Muncher

    Carrot Muncher Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    71
    Messages:
    463
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Probably a good idea to find out what it is/does before attempting to delete it.
     
    Carrot Muncher, Feb 22, 2009
    #4
  5. Nankuru

    Nankuru Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    215
    Messages:
    592
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    WinDirStat recognizes pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys, so it wouldn't be 'Unknown'; they are shown as 'Files'. Pagefile.sys would be 3.3 gig for a system with 3 gig of RAM though.

    Perhaps it's the shadow copies/system restore stuff? You could try deleting all but the most recent restore point.
     
    Nankuru, Feb 22, 2009
    #5
  6. red123

    red123 Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    125
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I tried doing that, but it did nothing. This is Vista 64bit btw, sorry. heh

    EDITED: Hm.... perhaps it really was the shadow copy. It is weird how when I deleted it, <unknown> still showed up until this morning.
     
    red123, Feb 22, 2009
    #6
  7. davepermen

    davepermen Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    2,972
    Messages:
    7,788
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    205
    it is data that is not accessible to windirstat + data that is compressed.

    so basically, in a default installation, it's the data in c:\system volume information.

    and, if you say have 1gb of data compressed to 0.5gb of data on disk (with ntfs compression, not zip or so), it will report 0.5gb unknown data.
     
    davepermen, Feb 22, 2009
    #7