Hard-drive space issue

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-06-13 06:37am

So, this bulshit low disk space message has appeared for my C drive- my 5gig partition on my single 80 gig hard drive (yeah, laugh it up).

Thing is- I check the size of all the files actually on the drive, and I should have 1 gig to spare (yes, I can see all the files). Instead, it says I have only 80megs.

Deleting internet files etc changes jack shit. I know it's wrong because it happened to me before and one time, upon reset, the hard disk space dramatically shot up to the "true" amount of space, over a gig. I asked my friend and he expalined it to me why this happened (something to do with the PC "forgetting" ... or something, and a reset triggering a check that rectified the amount of space)- but I can't for the life of me remember the specifics.

Anyone know what I'm talking about, and how I can get this fuckign thing to report the proper amount of space?

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2006-06-13 07:04am

If you are using FAT32, run chkdsk. Then convert to NTFS.

Otherwise; the sum of the files does not equal the total used diskspace. There is overhead and hidden "files" which explorer cant see.

My solution to low disk space warnings? Buy more disks

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-06-13 07:08am

Pagefile is full probebly, try moving the pagefile to another partition and setting it to a specified size(Min=Max).

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2006-06-13 07:17am

Also try running Crap Cleaner

Lazarus · Post by **Lazarus** » 2006-06-13 03:20pm

Not sure if this'll help a lot, but there's a great piece of software that usually helps a bit when you get hard drive space issues. It's called SequoiaView, and it lets you view your hard drive space graphically, which makes it far easier to see whats hogging your hard disk space.

http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

Post by **Edi** » 2006-06-13 04:57pm

You could resize the partition to be bigger. Clearing out the Windows\Temp folder could also help. If you're running XP, System Restore files takes up space. Defragging your drive can also help some, but not necessarily much. You should generally have over 25% or perferably over 30% of a partition free, because otherwise you're going to get inferior performance due to greater fragmentation and longer seek times.

Edi

Shadowhawk · Post by **Shadowhawk** » 2006-06-13 11:21pm

Lazarus wrote:Not sure if this'll help a lot, but there's a great piece of software that usually helps a bit when you get hard drive space issues. It's called SequoiaView, and it lets you view your hard drive space graphically, which makes it far easier to see whats hogging your hard disk space.

http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

Interesting, but the screenshots don't show it to be terribly intuitive. I use an older program called Scanner to do the same, but the interface is friendlier. It won't let you get file properties directly, but it's damned easy to see what's eating up your space.

It's not really designed for absurd sizes (this was developed when 40GB was spacious, or something; it takes a while to scan my system on startup), but it doesn't complain. It's also quite speedy once it's loaded.

My root structure:

(I was curious about that gigantic number of files on C:, so I checked it...229,556 of those files are my cache for NASA World Wind)

Displaying my E: drive, with the mouse cursor (not shown in the screenshot) hovering over one of the light purple blocks towards the bottom:

You can get it here or here.

But, Vympel, a chkdsk should correct the free space reporting, assuming the scanner doesn't show you're actually down to that little space.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-06-13 11:30pm

I personally prefer Treesize for that sort of thing, myself.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-06-13 11:32pm

I'm on NTFS, and tried running a scandisk (through the "tools" on the drive properties) but no change- but I know that the shit is wrong, since it happened before and nothing changed since. Where can I find the System Restore files?

As for resizing the partition- won't that essentially be formatting? I since spoke to my friend and he said scandisk as well, didn't change anything.

Shadowhawk · Post by **Shadowhawk** » 2006-06-13 11:43pm

Uraniun235 wrote:I personally prefer Treesize for that sort of thing, myself.

Looks interesting, but it's got piles of features. All I need is something to tell me where my space is going. The fact that Scanner is 160kb and free (even open source, for you zealots of that stripe) sweetens things.

And the exploded/stacked/layered pie chart is much cooler looking.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-06-13 11:43pm

There are tools that can resize partitions. Partition Magic is one of them. But beware, Partition Magic runs on the blood of virgin Teutonic princesses and has been known to screw things up but good.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-06-13 11:53pm

Shadowhawk wrote:
Uraniun235 wrote:I personally prefer Treesize for that sort of thing, myself.
Looks interesting, but it's got piles of features. All I need is something to tell me where my space is going. The fact that Scanner is 160kb and free (even open source, for you zealots of that stripe) sweetens things.

And the exploded/stacked/layered pie chart is much cooler looking.

Oh, barf, I didn't take a closer look at the link. It's gotten much bigger since I downloaded it. I use an earlier version (1.7 - they're on 4.something!) which just gives me a tree with numbers and colors, and weighs in at a little over 700KB.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-06-14 12:28am

Uraniun235 wrote:
Shadowhawk wrote:
Uraniun235 wrote:I personally prefer Treesize for that sort of thing, myself.
Looks interesting, but it's got piles of features. All I need is something to tell me where my space is going. The fact that Scanner is 160kb and free (even open source, for you zealots of that stripe) sweetens things.

And the exploded/stacked/layered pie chart is much cooler looking.
Oh, barf, I didn't take a closer look at the link. It's gotten much bigger since I downloaded it. I use an earlier version (1.7 - they're on 4.something!) which just gives me a tree with numbers and colors, and weighs in at a little over 700KB.

Damn and I was happy using an Alpha!

I currently use Steptree, graphical building style layout.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2006-06-14 12:52am

Vympel wrote:I'm on NTFS, and tried running a scandisk (through the "tools" on the drive properties) but no change- but I know that the shit is wrong, since it happened before and nothing changed since. Where can I find the System Restore files?

To remove all the system restore files, Right click on My Computer -> "System Restore" -> Settings -> tick "turn off system restore", hit OK. Then turn the sucker back on.

You might also want to use this system interals app which will show you hidden streams. Command line app, so you'll need to open "cmd" and then the app since it requires some flags. Also allows you to delete the hidden streams too.

IE slaps small chucks onto describe which Zone a file was DLed from and the icon to use for your favourites.

As for resizing the partition- won't that essentially be formatting? I since spoke to my friend and he said scandisk as well, didn't change anything.

Do you have anything 'after' the partition? Because there are some Microsoft tools which can extend the drive but they require space to exist after there the drive.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2006-06-14 03:58am

Uraniun235 wrote:
Shadowhawk wrote:
Uraniun235 wrote:I personally prefer Treesize for that sort of thing, myself.
Looks interesting, but it's got piles of features. All I need is something to tell me where my space is going. The fact that Scanner is 160kb and free (even open source, for you zealots of that stripe) sweetens things.

And the exploded/stacked/layered pie chart is much cooler looking.
Oh, barf, I didn't take a closer look at the link. It's gotten much bigger since I downloaded it. I use an earlier version (1.7 - they're on 4.something!) which just gives me a tree with numbers and colors, and weighs in at a little over 700KB.

Check the freeware section - they are giving away 1.7 which does exactly what you say. I just downloaded and it was actualy an upgrade for me

Altough, the only change from 1.5 that I was using seems to be no more annoying me about scanning large drives and getting the PRO version.

Jadetear · Post by **Jadetear** » 2006-06-14 07:52am

Destructionator XIII wrote:
Ace Pace wrote:Pagefile is full probebly, try moving the pagefile to another partition and setting it to a specified size(Min=Max).
Bad idea. Leave your pagefile right where it is. Moving it to another partition almost always hurts performance, since it increases the amount of movement the physical drive heads have to do to get to it.

If you have more than one physical hard drive: You should put the main page file on a drive that does not have your Windows installation. If you have more than 2 then put it on a drive that you are not installing your apps and games on.

If you only have one physical drive than Destructionator is right.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-06-14 11:42am

Exactly what I did, I have a raptor that houses my games and my Diamondmax10 houses my pagefile. One is on a SATA connection the pagefile is on a dedicated IDE bus.