Finding Free Disk space

[dr_mabeuse]

Sorry this question isn't very sexy, but i need help.

My Dell Dimension 4600 desktop is at least 5 years old but I can't afford a new one. I'm getting "Out of Disc space" messages constantly and when I check the room on my hard drive it looks like I'm using 39 out of 40 gigs of free space.

My question is, how can I find out what's taking up all that space? I really don't have that much on here. There's no music and no video and only a handful of photos, and I just don't have that many apps on here and no games. I already cleaned off the apps I don't use and managed to free up 250megs for operating, but that hardly seems right. All I do with this PC is word-processing and surfing. How did I fill up 39 gigs with data?

Can anyone help?

--dr.M.

Isn;t there a way in Windows XP you can look at drive C and see how much space every folder's taking up?

 

[iswallowloads]

Sorry this question isn't very sexy, but i need help.

My Dell Dimension 4600 desktop is at least 5 years old but I can't afford a new one. I'm getting "Out of Disc space" messages constantly and when I check the room on my hard drive it looks like I'm using 39 out of 40 gigs of free space.

My question is, how can I find out what's taking up all that space? I really don't have that much on here. There's no music and no video and only a handful of photos, and I just don't have that many apps on here and no games. I already cleaned off the apps I don't use and managed to free up 250megs for operating, but that hardly seems right. All I do with this PC is word-processing and surfing. How did I fill up 39 gigs with data?

Can anyone help?

--dr.M.

Isn;t there a way in Windows XP you can look at drive C and see how much space every folder's taking up?

I can't imagine what would be taking up that much. I've only used up 100gb, and that's with 6500 songs, about a hundred movies, thousands of RAW photos, and a dozen games.

Have you done the usual maintenance? Defrag, deleting temp internet files, etc.?

As far as finding out where all the data is, just right-click on your main folders (My Documents especially) and click properties. That should lead you to the culprit.

 

[niv78]

There are two ways to look at different things. The first which I suggest you doing is Start -- Control Panel -- Add or Remove Programs.

Go through that list and remove any programs you have installed over the 5 year span and still do not use.

Next go into My Documents folder and hover your mouse over each folder to find large folders. These tend to be picture folders that can eat up space over time. Hope this helps.

 

[CopyCarver]

I agree completely with the two previous posts. Following that sage advice will almost certainly identify the "space hogs" and eliminating the garbage that inevitably piles up over time will probably free up a significant amount of disk space.

If you're still low on space after a clean-up, you might want to consider buying an auxiliary drive -- either internal or external. There are also "thumb drives" that can be plugged into a USB port. $25 to $50 will buy a rather amazing amount of capacity.

 

[nakedphriend]

you should download ccleaner. Be a little careful about what you remove, but a lot of free space can be regained by removing unnecessary temporary files. What antivirus software do you use?

 

[A_Kefka]

I tend to keep pics and things on flash drives. Recently got a 16Gb flash drive for $30, so you can get a lot of space cheap. Also, if you find you can't free up enough space look into an external hard drive. Have seen 250Gb drives for about $100, and probably smaller ones cheaper.

 

[rev0102]

Check out treesize http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml
Great for finding out where all your gigabytes have gone.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

you should download ccleaner. Be a little careful about what you remove, but a lot of free space can be regained by removing unnecessary temporary files. What antivirus software do you use?

My anti-virus program is Norton. I just renewed it in June.

When your disk gets full, XP automatically pops up a system clean-up app that lets you clean out your temp folder, empty your trash, and looks for junk in several other places. It's run like 5-6 times, so there's really nothing left to dump.

I've already cleaned out my program files down to the bone, and using the right-click function in Windows Explorer, the biggest file I've found was my wife's music file, which was 1.78 gigs and which I transferred to a flash drive and then deleted from the computer, freeing up that much disk space. But this is still insane, filling up 38 gigs of a 40 gig drive with God-knows-what.

I downloaded Treesize and extracted it from Zip, but I can't get it to run. It just extracts it to my temp file and it just sits there. I'm doing something wrong.

Still screwing with it...

 

[Recidiva]

The only time this happened to me, the culprit was .wav files.

My .wav player was set to save files eternally and never delete them.

Just in case you have any sort of resident program like this, check to see if there's any .wav or video where the application saves anything and everything that's played in a separate directory.

You could have a bunch of video or .wav saved and not even know it.

In my case the program I was using was Express Scribe and I didn't know there was an option to have it automatically delete things that are 30 days old.

Hopefully this might nudge you toward the culprit.

 

[silverwhisper]

dr mabeuse: honestly, my first impulse is to wonder how current your AV and anti-spyware apps are.

personally, i dislike norton, finding it to be a very gluttonous resource hog just in terms of memory footprint while running. have you tried running the trend micro online app?

you've already pruned apps, temporary files & MP3s. have you considered installing a partition to create one OS-based partition and a second everything else partition?

ed

 

[phelon]

first do a search for *.tmp and delete them, then *.chk and delete.
then open your temp directory and if not empty, delete everything in it.
then run a defrag, then a chkdsk, then a full virus sweep.
check and delete quarantined files
then run a search for *.wma, *.mp3, *.avi, *.wav,

many will be valid files, but some maybe other things that should be moved.
you also may want to check on any backup programs you have run, you may have old copies laying around. my avg. backup is 500mb... so even a few of these can eat up space fast.

also check your system restore files. make sure you have a few, but not ones all the way back to when you got the computer.
same if you used goback or anything like that ever.. make sure the backups and such are gone.

lastly.. do a
*.* and set the file size to something like 5 or 10 mb... then anything over that size will display


if its still being an issue: PM me and maybe i can do a remote assist session to take a look for you.

 

[Sir Victor]

I also suggest that you download the free Ccleaner:
http://www.ccleaner.com/

Run it, see if it helps.

If that doesn't work, use find and search for *.wav, *.mpg, etc. just to see if you're missing something obvious. Choose view, and check details when exploring files so that the size shows up, and you can choose arrange, then file size so that they're sorted by size. I suppose that if you've been running Norton everyday since you got the machine and it has been logging the results there might be many thousands of log files but even that should not be so large.

I found a similar problem once where a system had the offline files checked and it was storing copies of online web content for use offline:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/mobility/learnmore/offlinefiles.mspx

I found this by browsing the C:\Windows directory, choosing details, arrange by size, and there were some huge folders of offline content. Don't recall if it directly reports the folder sizes, if not right click, then properties on the folder.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I tried clearing my temp files by doing a search on *.tmp and got a list of junk taking up like 1.4 gigs, but when I tried to delete them it said it "Cannot delete files: cannot read from the source file or disk", so the stuff wouldn't delete.

Have no idea what that means.

Found another ~8 gigs in wav files, which I deleted.

Stuff's still in my recycle bin in case any of it's critical.

Don't know why I can't empty the temp files though.

 

[Sir Victor]

Didn't notice if anyone mentioned that you should back up all your important data just in case there is something seriously wrong with your computer. Don't forget to do your address book and browser favorites, etc.
Some of the .tmp files might be in use by another program or the operating system. Ccleaner seems to get around this, or rarely you might have to boot in safe mode, I've never had to just to delete files.
I think it should have said file in use, cannot open, or share violation, not cannot read. Cannot read suggest that your drive might be failing, but it might just be the dumb way that MS reports it.

Errors can develope on the hard drive due to wear out, or having been turned off (or a power failure) in the middle of updating some of the data that keeps track of the organization on the disk. I suggest that you run the XP error checking tool before doing anything else, and see if it reports any serious errors, back up first, do a clean boot, and shut down all other programs:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/kbtip.mspx

Actually, if you think that there is a disk problem and you've lost some important data, don't use the MS error checking tool as there are much better industrial grade tools out there and the MS tool can do more harm than good if you really need some important data on there.

 

[hisgypsy]

All of the above is really good advice. Keep in mind that Windows takes up a lot of space, and if you don't empty your recycle bin, in reality all those files are still on your hard drive.

The simplest solution after following all of the above recommendations and you find you're still short on space? Go buy another hard drive. It's simple to install, either internal or external, and is cheap in comparison to buying a new computer. You can pick up a 500gb drive for under $100 and that should last you a good long time.

Also keep in mind that a 5 year old computer is going to have things start going wrong with it. So back up, back up, back up. It's no fun losing everything on your hard drive when it crashes.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Well, you've given me enough things to try, and I appreciate it. I'll run a check on the disk and see what happens.

I'm very wary of backing things up. In fact, i subscribe to Carbonite, which automatically backs up all my files every day and stores them on their own server. It costs $50/year, but I'm a writer, and the stuff on my hard disk is pretty much all my work. I had a hard drive crash on my years ago and lost a year's work, so I learned my lesson.

Thanks to everyone who helped me out, and I'm still open to more suggestions.

--dr.M.

 

[Sir Victor]

http://blog.tiensivu.com/aaron/arch...in-Windows-XP,-Vista-and-Server-20032008.html

 

[N_B]

http://lifehacker.com/software/disk-space/geek-to-live--visualize-your-hard-drive-usage-219058.php

This should help a bunch. You'll be amazed at what you have just lying around...

 

[N_B]

Oh, and give this a go as well. Duplicate filesa are a real disk killer.

 

[iswallowloads]

Also, if all else fails, you could always reformat your machine. After 5 years, it might be good idea to start completely fresh. You just have to make sure your patient and thorough in backing up critical files first.

 

[stirbird]

I tried clearing my temp files by doing a search on *.tmp and got a list of junk taking up like 1.4 gigs, but when I tried to delete them it said it "Cannot delete files: cannot read from the source file or disk", so the stuff wouldn't delete.

Have no idea what that means.

Found another ~8 gigs in wav files, which I deleted.

Stuff's still in my recycle bin in case any of it's critical.

Don't know why I can't empty the temp files though.

It's a shame but when Windows comes across even one tmp file it can't delete because some program is using it, it stops the whole deletion process. A cleaner program like some have recommended can sometimes get around this problem.

If you want to continue to delete tmp files manually, note the name of the file windows chokes on and then avoild all .tmp files in the list with similar names. You'll probably find several small groups like that. Or, sort your tmp files by Last Modified date, and start deleting the ones that haven't been touched in months first, then the more recent ones.

Did anyone mention your temporary internet files folder? That thing fills up if you are using Internet Explorer and haven't set it to clear the cache every time you exit the web browser.

Other file types I delete include .bak files and anything that begins with a ~

 

[Sir Victor]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148354

 

[phelon]

as a comment: if its in your recycle bin.. its still there, and the disk space isn;t returned. up to whatever the bins max size is...
also as your deleting.. defrag, you can easily lose 5-10% depending on the file allocation sizes the disk is using.. although usually its more of 3-5% ... still that can be an extra couple hundred meg on a drive

i think if i were you i'd get a nice external usb drive, move my files to it,
then do a format and reinstall xpsp3, it would be a couple days work getting it back to normal, but you would have the right files and not all the older crud, also would clean out the registry and once done you would still have a nice external drive for vids, pics, and localbackup.



h and if it tell you it can't delete something, it means its loaded up somewhere (usually), try using safemode and deleting it in there.

 

[mgringo]

While I agree it's a great idea to clean up your drive, and so forth, when I need disk space I just add another drive to my system. A 500 GB fire wire linked drive (or usb-2) costs about $100. That's cheaper than spending time finding free space, imo.

 

[count t]

this great piece of software: http://windirstat.info/ could help you. it gives you a nice graphical representation of what is taking up a lot of room on your hard drive.it does list everything on your hard drive so when in doubt leave a file alone and don't delete it.

best of luck