wtf? is chewing up space?

[richard]

In the past two weeks, something has taken charge and has begun eating up
all the free space on my c: drive.
Last week I went through the process of cleaning up space.
Getting rid of old unwanted unused programs.
Ok. I started off with 100 gigs on the C: drive.
I got told that it was suddenly low on space. Only 8 gigs left.
Using partition wizard, I borrowed space from another drive to double that.
That, wound up giving me 90 something free gigs.
Ok. Two days later, 66 gigs then 61, then 66 and suddenly back to 8.
Did several disk cleanups.
Tonight as I was doing that, I wind up with less than I started with as
free space. from 8 to 6.

So now does anyone have any clues as to wtf is causing the huge space
usage?

My thought is the cache. So how do I go about setting that size usage in
windows 7 home premium 64 bit?

 

[richard]

In the past two weeks, something has taken charge and has begun eating up
all the free space on my c: drive.
Last week I went through the process of cleaning up space.
Getting rid of old unwanted unused programs.
Ok. I started off with 100 gigs on the C: drive.
I got told that it was suddenly low on space. Only 8 gigs left.
Using partition wizard, I borrowed space from another drive to double that.
That, wound up giving me 90 something free gigs.
Ok. Two days later, 66 gigs then 61, then 66 and suddenly back to 8.
Did several disk cleanups.
Tonight as I was doing that, I wind up with less than I started with as
free space. from 8 to 6.

So now does anyone have any clues as to wtf is causing the huge space
usage?

My thought is the cache. So how do I go about setting that size usage in
windows 7 home premium 64 bit?

well I found the answer.
I ran tree size and it showed me instantly what the cause was.
I had installed the latest version of Google Earth in the past two weeks.
Are you sitting down? Not eating or drinking anything?
The latest version of Google Earth now demands it MUST take up 133.5 gigs
of space on YOUR hard drive.
Yup. So I uninstalled it. Did that free up the space?
Nope.
According to tree size, the problem remained.
So I had to manually locate the folder and delete all the remaining crap.
Now I am back in business and in control.

I'm going to reinstall google earth and see if it happens again.
If it does, it will be trashed permanently.

 

[Bruce Hagen]

well I found the answer.
I ran tree size and it showed me instantly what the cause was.
I had installed the latest version of Google Earth in the past two weeks.
Are you sitting down? Not eating or drinking anything?
The latest version of Google Earth now demands it MUST take up 133.5 gigs
of space on YOUR hard drive.
Yup. So I uninstalled it. Did that free up the space?
Nope.
According to tree size, the problem remained.
So I had to manually locate the folder and delete all the remaining crap.
Now I am back in business and in control.

I'm going to reinstall google earth and see if it happens again.
If it does, it will be trashed permanently.

Just an FYI: Revo Uninstaller removes most, if not all, little bits and
pieces of programs that the Windows uninstall via the Control Panel does
not. Something to consider not just for this issue.

Revo Uninstaller
http://download.cnet.com/Revo-Uninstaller/3000-2096_4-10687648.html

 

[Paul]

well I found the answer.
I ran tree size and it showed me instantly what the cause was.
I had installed the latest version of Google Earth in the past two weeks.
Are you sitting down? Not eating or drinking anything?
The latest version of Google Earth now demands it MUST take up 133.5 gigs
of space on YOUR hard drive.
Yup. So I uninstalled it. Did that free up the space?
Nope.
According to tree size, the problem remained.
So I had to manually locate the folder and delete all the remaining crap.
Now I am back in business and in control.

I'm going to reinstall google earth and see if it happens again.
If it does, it will be trashed permanently.

So what folder was this ? Just for the record.

There is more to this story, than meets the eye.

Paul

 

[richard]

So what folder was this ? Just for the record.

There is more to this story, than meets the eye.

Paul

C:users\{name}\appdata\locallow\google\google earth

 

[Fokke Nauta]

Just an FYI: Revo Uninstaller removes most, if not all, little bits and
pieces of programs that the Windows uninstall via the Control Panel does
not. Something to consider not just for this issue.

Revo Uninstaller
http://download.cnet.com/Revo-Uninstaller/3000-2096_4-10687648.html

+1
Works great.

Fokke

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

On 11/05/2013 05:08, Bruce Hagen wrote: []

Just an FYI: Revo Uninstaller removes most, if not all, little bits and
pieces of programs that the Windows uninstall via the Control Panel does
not. Something to consider not just for this issue.

Revo Uninstaller
http://download.cnet.com/Revo-Uninstaller/3000-2096_4-10687648.html

+1
Works great.

Fokke

What has been puzzling me for some time, is how Revo - or any similar,
but this one seems to get the most praise - _knows_ what it can and
can't remove. Short of doing a reinstall and monitoring it, so that it
knows for sure what files go with what (and even then not proof against
the case where an installation _replaces_ files), I can't see how it
can.

Unless it's the case that Revo runs all the time, and monitors all
installs anyway. Which seems excessive, and means you have to have
already decided to be using it, which - if it is the case - isn't a fact
that most of the people who praise it happen to mention.

 

[Ed Cryer]

On 11/05/2013 05:08, Bruce Hagen wrote: []

Just an FYI: Revo Uninstaller removes most, if not all, little bits and
pieces of programs that the Windows uninstall via the Control Panel does
not. Something to consider not just for this issue.

Revo Uninstaller
http://download.cnet.com/Revo-Uninstaller/3000-2096_4-10687648.html

+1
Works great.

Fokke

What has been puzzling me for some time, is how Revo - or any similar,
but this one seems to get the most praise - _knows_ what it can and
can't remove. Short of doing a reinstall and monitoring it, so that it
knows for sure what files go with what (and even then not proof against
the case where an installation _replaces_ files), I can't see how it can.

Unless it's the case that Revo runs all the time, and monitors all
installs anyway. Which seems excessive, and means you have to have
already decided to be using it, which - if it is the case - isn't a fact
that most of the people who praise it happen to mention.

I've had Revo installed for years (I never use it, mind you. I put it in
to try it once and left it) and there's never a sign of it in Task
Manager or elsewhere.
My guess about how it works is this;
It reads the list of installed software, scours places on disks, and
whatever doesn't belong to the list is treated as trash.
Hhhmmm! Very dangerous IMHO. I know lots of people praise it, but I
beware of it as I do of registry-cleaners and other tune-up things.
The good thing about it is that it presents you with its findings to be
scrutinised and amended before deleting anything.

Ed

 

[Ed Cryer]

C:users\{name}\appdata\locallow\google\google earth

I've still got Google Earth version 6 (6.1.0.5001, Build Date
10/17/2011) installed. I only use it about once a month.
My folder is 650MB.
I'd like to update, but your experience has put me off. Thanks for that.
As to whether that happens to everyone or not, perhaps others with the
latest version 7 could let us know.

Ed

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: []

What has been puzzling me for some time, is how Revo - or any similar,
but this one seems to get the most praise - _knows_ what it can and
can't remove. Short of doing a reinstall and monitoring it, so that it
knows for sure what files go with what (and even then not proof against
the case where an installation _replaces_ files), I can't see how it can.

Unless it's the case that Revo runs all the time, and monitors all
installs anyway. Which seems excessive, and means you have to have
already decided to be using it, which - if it is the case - isn't a fact
that most of the people who praise it happen to mention.

I've had Revo installed for years (I never use it, mind you. I put it
in to try it once and left it) and there's never a sign of it in Task
Manager or elsewhere.

That's interesting to know. So it's not an install monitor (or, if it
is, you disabled that option when you installed it).

My guess about how it works is this;
It reads the list of installed software, scours places on disks, and
whatever doesn't belong to the list is treated as trash.
Hhhmmm! Very dangerous IMHO. I know lots of people praise it, but I

IMO too!

beware of it as I do of registry-cleaners and other tune-up things.
The good thing about it is that it presents you with its findings to be
scrutinised and amended before deleting anything.

Yes, but I bet a lot of people just select all of them )-:.
[]

 

[s|b]

Just an FYI: Revo Uninstaller removes most, if not all, little bits and
pieces of programs that the Windows uninstall via the Control Panel does
not. Something to consider not just for this issue.

He already uninstalled Google Earth, so I don't think Revo Uninstaller
will do any good. Also, Revo can't uninstall 64-bit software (I don't
know if Google Earth can do 64-bit and I can't be bothered to look it
up).

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

well I found the answer.
I ran tree size and it showed me instantly what the cause was.
I had installed the latest version of Google Earth in the past two weeks.
Are you sitting down? Not eating or drinking anything?
The latest version of Google Earth now demands it MUST take up 133.5 gigs
of space on YOUR hard drive.
Yup. So I uninstalled it. Did that free up the space?
Nope.
According to tree size, the problem remained.
So I had to manually locate the folder and delete all the remaining crap.
Now I am back in business and in control.

I'm going to reinstall google earth and see if it happens again.
If it does, it will be trashed permanently.

There have been some issues with Google Earth 7. In particular, some
have had issues with one of the directories filling up with thousands of
..SST files.

For you, was the issue just a giant cache in the main folder, or
something else? You can use the GE settings to set the maximum cache
size.

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

There have been some issues with Google Earth 7. In particular, some
have had issues with one of the directories filling up with thousands of
.SST files.

For you, was the issue just a giant cache in the main folder, or
something else? You can use the GE settings to set the maximum cache
size.

To add: I did have the sst issue along with slow database downloads and
had backtracked to 6.x. I recently installed 7.0.2.8415 and don't see
any obvious issues, yet. It does seem as if GE7 uses the sst files
instead of the single large cache files. I deleted the old cache files
for GE6, and they haven't reappeared.

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

To add: I did have the sst issue along with slow database downloads and
had backtracked to 6.x. I recently installed 7.0.2.8415 and don't see
any obvious issues, yet. It does seem as if GE7 uses the sst files
instead of the single large cache files. I deleted the old cache files
for GE6, and they haven't reappeared.

I need to check this stuff more often! The latest release is 7.1.1.1580.
Before that was 7.0.3.8542, and that had a fix to prevent the cache
oversize issue:
http://support.google.com/earth/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40901

 

[Paul]

I need to check this stuff more often! The latest release is 7.1.1.1580.
Before that was 7.0.3.8542, and that had a fix to prevent the cache
oversize issue:
http://support.google.com/earth/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40901

I noticed that too.

On my WinXP install, there is an older version of Google Earth, and
it uses a single .db file.

Whereas, in Windows 8, the newer Google Earth in there, has around
5500 files in the cache folder, some of which are .sst. (I didn't
examine all the files.)

So there's a difference between versions, as to how the cache is
set up.

The advantage of the .db format, is at least it doesn't abuse
the file system as such. You've only got one file to worry about,
with the real files hidden inside the database.

It still doesn't explain though, why the software couldn't figure
out it was using more than the allowed amount of cache space.

Paul

 

[Robin Bignall]

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: []

What has been puzzling me for some time, is how Revo - or any similar,
but this one seems to get the most praise - _knows_ what it can and
can't remove. Short of doing a reinstall and monitoring it, so that it
knows for sure what files go with what (and even then not proof against
the case where an installation _replaces_ files), I can't see how it can.

Unless it's the case that Revo runs all the time, and monitors all
installs anyway. Which seems excessive, and means you have to have
already decided to be using it, which - if it is the case - isn't a fact
that most of the people who praise it happen to mention.

I've had Revo installed for years (I never use it, mind you. I put it
in to try it once and left it) and there's never a sign of it in Task
Manager or elsewhere.

That's interesting to know. So it's not an install monitor (or, if it
is, you disabled that option when you installed it).

I have the Revo Professional version. It does not run all of the time
and will monitor an install only if you ask it to.
I'm not aware that it can do that. If you have bits and pieces of
various uninstalled programs around, you can do a forced uninstall for
them *one at a time* by finding a path to each one per Revo run, and it
will try to find any registry entries and files for that particular
path. In no way is it a general purpose registry cleaner.

IMO too!

beware of it as I do of registry-cleaners and other tune-up things.
The good thing about it is that it presents you with its findings to be
scrutinised and amended before deleting anything.

Yes, but I bet a lot of people just select all of them )-:.
[]

Which is bad policy.

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

It still doesn't explain though, why the software couldn't figure
out it was using more than the allowed amount of cache space.

Probably just a stupid bug somewhere. Maybe it wasn't watching the total
directory size since it now uses a zillion little files instead of just
one big one. The fix was just for Windows, so it may be how they were
accessing size data compared to Linux or Mac.

The 7.1 version is actually a beta and I got it via FileHippo. I'm not
certain what the normal Google download will get you, as it's just one
of those stubs that downloads the full thing. You never know what
version you will get. The file properties of the installer don't say
what version of GE it is, just the version of the installer itself.

 

[Thip]

Just an FYI: Revo Uninstaller removes most, if not all, little bits and
pieces of programs that the Windows uninstall via the Control Panel does
not. Something to consider not just for this issue.

Revo Uninstaller
http://download.cnet.com/Revo-Uninstaller/3000-2096_4-10687648.html

Advanced Uninstaller Pro does a slightly better job with 64-bit, unless
Revo's now offering a freeware version. Last I checked, only the 32-bit
version was free.

http://www.advanceduninstaller.com/

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

What has been puzzling me for some time, is how Revo - or any similar,
but this one seems to get the most praise - _knows_ what it can and
can't remove. Short of doing a reinstall and monitoring it, so that it
knows for sure what files go with what (and even then not proof against
the case where an installation _replaces_ files), I can't see how it
can.

No. When the program's own uninstaller finishes, Revo just looks through
the registry and the file system looking for things it recognizes as
belonging to the program that was just uninstalled (but only if you
allow it to - it's a preference).

Unless it's the case that Revo runs all the time, and monitors all
installs anyway. Which seems excessive, and means you have to have
already decided to be using it, which - if it is the case - isn't a fact
that most of the people who praise it happen to mention.

The free version of Revo won't do that, and the paid version (AFAIK)
does it only when you ask it to.

 

[Ken Blake]

C:users\{name}\appdata\locallow\google\google earth

I have the latest version of Google Earth, 7.1.1.1580, installed
here. That folder contains 280MB, nowhere near the 133.5GB you say it
does.