Hard disk space disappears for no identifiable reason!

Hello all :-)

I have been using this computer for about a month and the problem emerged since day one

I am aware that downloading files, creating files, chatting, recording, downloading mail, and browsing will use disk space, and that certain applications download/create files in the background. I'm used to the amount of disk space these things take up. In the past weeks, the amount of space I lose is very abnormal. Specially with the fact a barely use it, haven't even downloaded or installed any programs apart from Windows updating programs which didn't take more than 500 MB from my HD

I think about 30-40 GB of space has inexplicably vanished in the past weeks. I've gone from having about 230 GB free to 180 GB without installing anything apart that I set up an user account which is meant to my mum's use but she didn't use it yet. Right now, after restarting, I have 179 GB free, and that will disappear after the computer restart. Everytime I reboot about 1 GB is vanished from my HD. If I reboot twice a day then near 2 GB are gone!

Oh and the Scan Disk utility didn't show any problems with my HD and there are no programs running in the background comsuming too much whatever that shows up in the Task Manager.

I am using Windows 7 Ultimate

Any idea on what's draining my space??

Thank you folks!

Hey there, Carol. Welcome to the site!

It's possible that the System Restore functionality of Windows is what is causing disk space to be used. This is normal operation and nothing really to be concerned with.

I recommend that you download and install Ccleaner. This is an excellent utility to clear unnecessary files from the machine. It is also great for your privacy, to use this because it gets rid of ways that websites can and do track you.

It is a very safe program to run as it will never damage anything necessary to keep on the machine. It is simply a very excellent program.

http://www.piriform.com/

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You can also go to C:/Windows/SoftwareDistribution/Download/ and delete all the contents in there. This will free some space and is 100% safe and good to do.

Hey TorrentG how funny I was just Googleing for CCleaner when I received your reply! I will give it a go but I am a little afraid I'll tick something wrong for deleting and may damage my system by deleting important files? well I will make a backup and see if it goes all fine, I will post back.

Thank you so much :-)

You're welcome.

There's nothing that Ccleaner can or will remove that will cause any issues.

So feel free to check any boxes you want as it will all be fine, regardless.

I have everything checked, with the following exceptions:

All the ones under advanced. I do have Old Prefetch Data checked though.

The final 3 in the System section.

Thank you for your support TorrentG :-)

I've run the program and rebooted the computer and it made little difference, less than 1 GB more free space actually. I'd like to see if the System Restore functionality is doing this as you said, would you know what is the path to the backup folder on Windows 7? Also my windows folder says it has 10GB of files, is it normal?

Another thing I find funny is that with the "System Information" program says my Logical Disk is a 250 GB and then the Storage Device says it is a 220 GB -thats actually the amount of size it shows on "My Computer" (220 GB) but I bought it as a 250 GB laptop. I bought it with Windows 7 and remember having over 210 GB free, which I found odd as I bought a 250 GB laptop and was expecting at least 230 free GB but now only 179 GB lol

Yes, that is completely normal to have 220 GB usable space on a 250 GB drive. It's the formatting of the drive that needs to be performed so files can be placed on it that is responsible for the difference. 100% normal.

Under normal conditions and without doing special things, you can not view the System Restore files. What you can do is go to the settings page responsible for it.

You can press the Windows key + Pause/Break key on the keyboard at the same time. Then click on System protection.

You can use this to delete old restore points or set it so that it will not make them at all. You can also set the maximum space allloted to the feature. It's recommended to keep it enabled in case you have some issues that may be difficult to otherwise repair, for you.

Yep, 10 GB, more or less is perfectly normal for Windows folder. Mine is 16.4 GB and I'm only using the smaller 32 bit version of Windows 7.

You're welcome.

I think if I don't figure out what's eating my HD I will need to format it lol

...do you remember when we use to have a 20GB HD and would last forever? Now it looks so little no matter how big it is :-D

Thank you again for your time and all of your fast support TorrentG

Carolina

Yes, I do. I had TI and Commodores in the 80s. My first PC of the 90s was from a friend and it only had a 1 GB hdd.

That's when I learned where just about every single thing that can be deleted safely was. lol

A general rule of thumb to quickly convert the manufacturer's hard disk capacity to the standard Windows formatted capacity is 0.93 capacity of HDD from manufacturer for HDDs less than a terabyte and 0.91 capacity of HDD from manufacturer for HDDs equal to or greater than 1 terabyte.

This has to do with hard drive manufacturers basing the hard drive size on a decimal size. While Windows uses binary sizing.

Let’s take a real example, Seagate/Maxtor DiamondMax 21 hard disk drive with “250 GB”. It is announced as being a 250 GB hard disk drive, having 488,397,168 sectors. With this number of sectors we can easily find out that the capacity of this hard disk drive is of 250,059,350,016 bytes, or 232.88 GB and not 250 GB. So here is why your 250 GB hard drive is only formatted with 232 GB: it IS a 232 GB hard drive!

Here's a good article to read that explains it better: Hard Disk Drives Capacity Limits

CCleaner has a page to view your Restore Points. On the left side of the CCleaner's main page, you'll see four options. Click Tools, then you have the options of Uninstall, Startup & System Restore. On the System Restore page, you can view and delete those that you no longer need. It's the easiest way to find your restore points on a single page.

Cat