My computer says I have 27.8 gb left, 4 h later 20.1gb left ?!?!?

So what I can tell this is happening since last night. Its been driving me nuts. Like it says in the title, I had 27.8 gb this was around 8:00pm and by like midnight I had 20.1gb.

These are some of the things I have done since I found out of the problem:
1)So I am using Diskeeper 2008 Pro Premium for my Defrag.
2)Using Avira AntiVir Personal (Free one)
3)Used Ccleaner and done a Disk Clean up.
4)Also Deleted at least 12gb of stuff. Got some space back but again today
its still going down. Sometimes fast and sometimes slow.

Before I did everything above I did a Restore back to the 14th and still doing this.


If I don't touch my computer it stays where it is. Only when I start doing things. Example : Opening a Video, firefox, music . I lose space


Before I started writing this the Computer was at 31.0gb and now 30.4 gb ?!?!?
Anyone have a Clue what it is or what else I can do ?

 

Do a search of all files created or modified today. That may help track down this issue.

 

Ok that's sounds like a good idea . Just last time I tryed to search for soemthing on my vista it didn't work the way I wanted . So hope this doesn't sound like a noob but how do I search for content from yesderday to today on vista ?

 

disable system restore and that behaviour should be gone. if not, you have a serious problem.

greetings to some other swiss guy?

 

First great to see another Swiss person.
Second . I never had a problem with system restore ever so why do you think this would cause the problem ?

 

system restore tends to grow and grow. so disable it to see if the behaviour dissapears. system restore may be the reason. if not, good luck finding out (we'll help for sure for further steps).

from where are you, exactly?

 

Ok I will give this a try then later tonight.

I am in the canton de Vaud . Swiss French part 30 mind from aigle

 

okay. augst, close to basel / bâle here.

i guessed you won't speak swiss german, i just .. felt it

greetings to the south

 

OK just turned off my System Restore, and from 29.1gb shot up to 67.2gb free. So that sounds like that was the Problem.

But question's
1)"Why would this have really caused the problem, never had a problem before"
2)" Why do some people turn it off ?"
3)"If you have a problem with your computer later on how would you fix it with out System Restore ?"

 

1) Because the system reserves some space for system restore. The size of this will change depends on your system.
2) As you did, to get some space back.
3) You can't.

 

But if I turn it on again. ( Because I have used it a lot for things that I try on my main computer and forget to test on my VM's)

Will it happen again right there. or Will it be like 1 year from now and go crazy again ?

 

You can reduce the amount system restore uses:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/reduce-system-restores-disk-usage-in-vista/

 

Kool thanks man, thats what I need a step by step. Thanks for all the Help from everyone in this post !!!!!!!!!

 

I doubt that system restore file increases by itself i think u have to do that manually well i could be wrong well i hope u figured it out....

 

the site darth bane listed works like a charm. i have used that and it will save approximately 2-3 restore points off of 1 GB of space

 

What most likely happened was the system created a restore point while your system was idle. The System, by default, creates a restore point once a day if the system sits idle for more than 10 - 15 minutes.

 

1) maybe you never noticed? maybe the system states got bigger and bigger due to some newer data on the laptop that gets copied onto each restore point? dunno.

2) because i don't need it (see 3)), and it saves space and disk usage

3) i restore from the windows home server.

 

Ah ok. Well I do have "Symantec Ghost 11 Corporate Edition" got this from my teacher. And he told me if I have any problem this is easy for full system backups. I would try to make a server this summer, but have crazy summer classes. I have Turned my system Restore back on, always has been help-full in the past.

 

jup, leave it on, tweak it to use less storage space, and you'll be (quite) fine.

any form of external backup is still needed, not if your os fails, but if your hdd fails.

 

OK so i did what was on this site and I can see why this would have been a problem.

Max was 42.501GB and change it to 15gb.

This is a 300gb hard drive and I only have 63 gb left. Yeha thats a lot of stuff, but I don't like bringing back and forth External Hard drive with me at the Airports. Almost got in trouble last time. lol

 

makes sence. but you have a backup at home, do you?

 

Yeah I do. I have 2 640gb External Hard drives backed up with all my file and software in the US. Its just I am in Switzerland at the moment for the summer love being home again, plus can't wait till the 1st of august.

Also this computer has a Back up partition (only from Factory default) but As long as my stuff is backed up on my externals I am good. thanks again guys

 

I had the same problem as you and solved it the same way.

I lowered the max storage space to 4 GB... I think that is enough, there's no need to set it as high as 15 GB...

 

But only when there are updates applied or shadowed files changed. 7 gb in just four hours sounds like something else besides system restore to me. I guess it COULD be system restore if a bunch of updates were applied in that four hour window, or a bunch of shadowed files were updated. But that seems like a real stretch to me.

I think the key here is to try to find out what is actually eating away at the disk space rather then taking shots in the dark. Maybe something in the Sysinternals arsenal might help, like diskmon or filemon. (One of those two is now a part of process explorer, but I forget which.)

Gary

 

Well I have had my system restore back on this hole time and I need to fix it again. from 62.9 gb I was down to 48.9gb today !!!!

So I am going back to the site "Darth Bane" gave me (Thanks by the way). and change my setting again.

What I can tell you, the day this started all up, I had updates I needed to do and I had some last night to, think it was 52.1 gb last now and like I said this morning 48.9gb .

I did scan my hole system (With Avira AntiVir Personal- Free) didn't find a thing. Except 1 cookie.

I may try a Error Checking on my C drive see if there is anything there. If you guys have anymore Idea I would be glad to hear them.

 

yeah it's true, shouldn't grow that fast while idling.. it was just an idea..