lost hard drive space

[thingimijig]

i noticed this morning that i have suddenly lost about 8gb from my hard drive.
i have been doing back ups a while now but never had this before, the only thing i can think of is for the first time the other day i used decrypter to read and create an iso and burn it back on 7 disc.

checked all through the hard drive and done a defrag but cant find anything.
anybody else had this prob or know what has happened.

thingimijig.

[ghoster]

i had that problem before but it had nothing to do with bucking up dvds. i iinstalled go back and that will eat up atleast 4 gigs of space. so if you have that installed then that could be your problem.

[siyrobbo]

that happened to me once, have you made sure your recycle bin is empty?

[thingimijig]

nothing recently installed and all temp folders and recycle bin empty.

thingimijig.

[dcsos]

Do you have Instanst Copy?
I read a post by a guy who claime even when you erase the .PDI iso files this app creates they take gigs of harddive after they're deleted!
I haven't had time to investigate this claim.
He says only re-formattting got rid of the space taken

My trick for finding large files you didn't know were still there
Open search ..don't type anything..and search for all files and folders.
(DOSEN'T work in 98 as 98's search MAXXES out at 10,000files)...
Now you have all the files on your computer in the search window..Now sort by size and investigate the BIGGEST files.
often there's a TMP or VOB you didn't know was taking those GIGS

[housepig]

two other things...

check out SequoiaView - http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/ - it graphically displays the contents of your harddrive like a bunch of building blocks, so it's easy to see large files taking up wads of space.

also check your slack space - it's areas that don't have data in them, but are unusable because of the way data is written to the disc. This is a good freeware tool - http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptslack.asp

and check your "restore" folder - I was working on my computer, deleting old files, and I kept seeing the free space get smaller and smaller, because my 'system restore' function got turned on somehow and I was emptying one section of the hard drive into the other... and inflating the file size to boot!

hope this helps - good luck.

- housepig

[thingimijig]

thanks for all the replys.

it was 15gb alltogether and it was in nortons protected files.

and yes i have disabled the option.

thanks again.

thingimijig.

[Will Hay]

Hey thingamajig, how are you!?!!
One thing to watch out for in WinXP (if that's what you're using) is the backup function.
Each time you add another program WinXP creates a roll-back point, and this can add [x]gb's to your system.
I Turn it off, preferring to use Norton Ghost and backup to a second hard drive.
I have too many program's on my machine to risk having to install them all back on again!
Will

[Hardcoreruss]

To free up disk space, you cannot go wrong with Mcafee Quick Clean Lite. It is the best program cleans everything even shared dll's. Well worth the readies.

[cbrock007]

Try to DeFrag your hard drive. I had the same problem and I freed up 20 gigs....


Cbrock007

[MackemX]

To free up disk space, you cannot go wrong with Mcafee Quick Clean Lite. It is the best program cleans everything even shared dll's. Well worth the readies.

format c:\ works for me

I'm forever spring cleaning my computer and if I cannot get rid of stuff I just buy another 120Gb HD

I can't be bothered installing again, I've had this OS for over 16 months now and I've it running perfectly for about 14 of those months. I've installed that many progs, tweaks, updates etc I think it will be a while before I re-install again.

I've even fought off 3 viruses without reinstalling cos I have my system running to perfection and I don't want to lose stuff by re-installing and losing progs, updates, tweaks, settings etc that I know I may never get back again cos I won't remember having them in the 1st place

I tried keeping a list of mods etc I made to the system but you know how it goes, that stopped after a few months cos I ain't that organized

my computer is in the state that a teenagers bedroom would be, but I know how everything works and where it iall s

500GB of junk