Why am I losing so much disk space?

[Han Solo1]

Running Vista with a small 40 gb C Drive HD (basic NTFS), folder account for about 23gb of space and I am left with about 820mb of space which accounts for 2% free space. I have done error checks, defrag and deleted temp files; none of which has helped. So basically I am losing 13 gb of space for no apparent reason. I am also thinking of making the c drive dynamic but don't know if that would help. Any suggestions? TIA

[Soopafresh]

Download this. It'll show you where the space is going

http://nirsoft.net/utils/folrep.zip

Make sure you choose C:\ as the root folder to scan

[Han Solo1]

I'll give it a whirl.

[DarrellS]

A 40GB HDD is perfect for an operating system, your programs and a few files here and there but you really need a storage drive for all your movies, music and data files. The bigger the better. Fry's has a 750GB Seagate for $89. Looks like you have room for 4 of them.

You need 15GB of available space to run Vista. 23+15=38 which leaves 2% free.

Edit:

Note: One gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes; accessible capacity will be less and actual capacity depends on the operating environment and formatting.

[Bjs]

Read this > http://directedge.us/node/37

[Squash]

Like that link from Bjs says, Volume Shadow and System Restore in Vista can use a lot of disk space, and doesn't provide an easy way to change how much space it uses, like XP did. You should be able to regain a few gigs by turning it off and then back on again, forcing Vista to clean out the old System Restore points and Volume Shadow copies and re-calculate how much disk space to use in the future:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/07/01/disable-and-turn-off-system-restore-shadow-co...windows-vista/

Note the precautions there and see if they're important to you. They weren't to me. The last time I did this I picked up twenty-something gigs, but that was on a 320GB HD.

There's also a link there on how to manually specify how much space System Restore/Volume Shadow Copy will use.

[Ruut]

There's another program, which is veru easy to use: TreeSize Free.
You can d/l it from: http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

Hope this helps.

[RabidDog]

SequioaView is great if you're having trouble seeing the wood for the trees.