Hard drive shows nearly full but its not

Perito · Apr 17, 2009, 07:28 AM

Look for large files on your drive. I located a free scanner, but I haven't tried it so I won't vouch for it.

DiskZoom - Free software downloads and reviews - CNET Download.com

I suspect that there may be some program that's logging something onto your hard drive. More than likely, you can delete these files with nothing happening, but you need to find out what they are and where they came from before you do that.

seahwk83 · Apr 17, 2009, 09:53 AM

Right click on c: and choose properties, click disk cleanup

When this part is done, click on the tab that says more options

Now click the delete files button next to system restore and shadow copies ( this will only delete previous resotre points, except for the last one made - so your last restore point is saved) and say OK

You should notice a considerable difference when done

boojumm · Apr 17, 2009, 11:51 AM

Tried both suggestions above (thankyou) but no change.

Perito · Apr 17, 2009, 11:56 AM

What did you see? If you don't tell us, we can't help you. The large files that are consuming space on your hard drive won't go away by themselves. You need to figure out why the space is being used and then decide if you want to move some files to storage (CD, etc) or delete them.

boojumm · Apr 17, 2009, 12:15 PM

OK. Here goes. My 160 GB hard drive is divided into 3 partitions. My computer shows:
C: 137 GB total. 32.8 GB free.
S: 1.47 GB total. 712 MB free.
Q: 9.75 GB total. 4.16 GB free (this is the checkpoint partition).
When I run DiskZoom on the C drive is shows its size as 61 GB total usage. So based on that, 137 GB (size 'My Computer' shows) minus 61 GB equals 76 GB (the amount I think should be free) instead of the 32.8 MB 'My computer' shows to be free. A delta of
43.2 MB.

I guess I'm confused about the delta.

Perito · Apr 17, 2009, 12:39 PM

Have you run CHKDSK on this drive? Get into a DOS window (START | RUN enter CMD - click "GO") and run "CHKDSK /F". Let it finish. There may be some large "lost" blocks.

Some of the "slack" may be due to the "slack space" in files, but to have that much slack space (the difference in the space allocated on the drive and the space actually used for a file), you'd have to have a gazillion small files.

Also, in DiskZoom, right-click on the largest "blocks" (the first vertical block should be "C:" If you click on it, the other blocks will be shown at the right. The blocks represent a subdirectory with the largest at the top. If you see a big one, you can follow the columns to the right to see which subdirectories are large. If you see something that's strange, right-click on it and select "Open Containing Folder" to open up the subdirectory in a "windows explorer" window. You can then see the files. Change the view to "DETAILS" and sort on the file size to see the largest files.

If there are any weird-looking large files, post here or google them and see if they're ok to blow away.

boojumm · Apr 17, 2009, 01:48 PM

My largest folder is a 20 GB folder of digital photos. Perhaps those have a lot of slack space? I ran CHKDSK and it didn't change the free space. Perhaps the photos are the culprit?

Perito · Apr 17, 2009, 03:18 PM

How many of them are there?

boojumm · Apr 17, 2009, 04:39 PM

There are 10,800 files (photos) 91 subfolders.

Hard drive shows nearly full but its not

Add your answer here.

Check out some similar questions!