What's taking up all my disk space?!

So, I just got a new HP dv6000t with a 120gb hard drive. I deleted the recovery partition today to free up some space. I was surprised to see that I had somehow already used about 45gb worth of space on the drive. I opened the C: drive, showed all the hidden folders, and highlited all of the folders on the drive and choose "properties" to see their size. They only added up to about 20gb. Where's this other sneaky 25gb coming from?? Any ideas? The only extra things I've installed so far are:

Counter Strike
Counter Strike: Source
Office 2007
A random 1gb file

Thanks guys!

 

How many partitions are shown when you look at the Disk Management console? If you delete a partition, it doesn't automatically add it back in. If the recovery partition were around 18-20GB, I'd guess that's where it's missing. To combine partitions you need something like Partition Magic.

 

You can use acronis disk director suite to see whether you have unallocated disk space... an unallocated disk space will not show up and so you might think that you are missing some disk space..

if you find any unallocated space just merge it to your other partition using acronis that i just mentioned..

Good luck!

 

Try one of these and perhaps it will aide you in discovering what's using all that space.

• JDiskReport
• SpaceMonger
• 3D FileSystem Profiler

note: many of these require Java. Download the lates virtual machine, if you don't already have it, here

 

Also remember that System Restore uses 12% of your drive by default.
12% of 120 = 14.4 Gig of "lost" space.
You can easily turn it down, or turn it off completely. I set mine at 3-5% depending on how much screwing around I'm doing with the machine.

And the swap files (pagefile.sys) is usually around 1 Gig.

 

Well, here's what JDisk shows me:

Program Files-8.4 gb

Windows - 7.9 gb

Temp 5.7 gb

Files in this directory - 4.3 gb (What is this?!)

Users - 2.2 gb

Hmm...JDisk also says that the total for the c: drive is 27.9 gb, although properties for c: drive says 42.3 gb. WTF?! Lol this is really weird...

So, what should I do? Oh, and my pagefile is actually 2 gb (I'm running vista).

Thanks!

 

Also, the 5 biggest files are as follows:

BASE.WIM - 5.7 gb (Wow, what the hell is this? It's in the temp folder)

pagefile.sys - 2.3 gb

hiberfil.sys - 2 gb

Counter-Strike Source shared.gcf - 1.6 gb

source materials - 1 gb

 

Also, what's a good alternative to Acronis for Vista? I downloaded it but it didn't work.

Also, sorry for the triple post!

Any ideas guys??

 

If you don't use hibernation, then turn it off to save yourself the 2GB that is allocated for hiberfil.sys. Turn off system restore if it is on, as it's nearly useless in my experience. Go ahead and delete the BASE.WIM file, if it's in the C:\temp directory then it's probably some setup file that Windows forgot to delete after install. The CS:S stuff is pretty self explanatory.

 

Well, I do use hibernation (a lot). How do I turn off System Restore? And also, are you sure I can delete the BASE.WIM file? Thanks so much so far guys!!

 

To turn off System restore in Vista:
1. goto control panel
2. click on system icon
3. on the left side of screen click on advanced syst settings
4. remove check from the c drive in avaliable disks

 

Ok, I turned off system restore. Now, should I delete the BASE.WIM file, or is it necessary for Vista?

EDIT: Um, wow! I checked my C: properties, and now I'm back down to the correct 26.2 used. Turning off System Restore freed up over 15gb! Wow, such a waste of space.

Well, I'm still wondering about the BASE.WIM file. What do you guys think?

 

I don't have a Base.Wim in my Temp file.

 

Did you think i posted this for no reason?

System restore is not worth using 12% of your drive, but i'd advise against turning it off entirely. It can save a lot of headaches when you run into problems. Lot easier to do a restore than it is to completely reinstall everything. Saving 1 or 2 gig for system restore is worth it.

 

The wim file is a big image file. I dont think you can use it for anything. Do you have restore CDs or DVDs for your computer? Windows doesnt need it for sure and it would be a new way of doing things if it was used for restore. If you want to make sure that you dont need it move the file to some other place. Restart and use Windows for a day or so. If nothing complains that the file is gone you dont need it.

 

I think temp is for deleting. Open up Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Cleanup and clean your system and check if the wim file have been deleted. If not, do it manually. In my view files in temp directory are for temporary use.

 

If you want to set how many GBs to use for system restore, go to start>run>type "cmd"

when the cmd opens, type "vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=2GB"

that will set our system restore to only 2GB, if you want to set it to more/less, just replace the "2" in the 2GB to whatever you want.

 

Anything in the temp folder is safe to delete. It is, pretty much by definition, *temporary*.
It's generally used by installers to dump data into, and usually, they clean it up afterwards. But not always.

 

And the "System volume information"
It acts like a second but hidden recycle been, always kind enough to make multiple back-ups from every single virus...

 

These sites also have good tweaks for Vista.

http://www.tweakvista.com/
http://computerperformance.co.uk/vista/vista_desktop.htm
http://www.howtogeek.com/tag/windows-vista
http://www.vistarepairsite.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/using/windowsvista/tipsandtricks/default.mspx
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=499870