Losing free space

I've noticed lately that ever so often, for no reason at all the free space on my C: keeps getting smaller, like something is growing and I can't figure out what it is.

I've run a diagnostics test on the hard drive and it's fine. I also have AVG run a scan every night so I'm almost certain it's not a virus. I also switched the page file system from the C: to D: and that gave me back about 3GB of space, but almost immediately after that the free space disappeared.

This is getting really frustrating because I'm running with 18MB of free space right now and every time I free up more space it just takes it away.

This sounds very much like a type of virus or is it Vista doing something stupid.

Computer
Windows Vista (Service Pack 1)
C: 74GB 10000rpm Raptor Hard Drive
D: 160GB 7200rpm Hard Drive

Fragmentation can cause some loss of space, and you cannot effectively defrag a volume with very little free space. Also, with so little space, fragmentation continues to increase.

MRD said:

Fragmentation can cause some loss of space, and you cannot effectively defrag a volume with very little free space. Also, with so little space, fragmentation continues to increase.

Click to expand...

I run a defrag once a week on both drives.

Thanks for the reply.

With 18mb of free space, defrag cannot defrag anything though, so it's basically a waste of time. You need free space to defrag.

redone632 said:

This is getting really frustrating because I'm running with 18MB of free space right now and every time I free up more space it just takes it away.

Click to expand...

MRD said:

... and you cannot effectively defrag a volume with very little free space. Also, with so little space, fragmentation continues to increase.

Click to expand...

18mb isn't enough for a proper defrag, you need 15% or more free space. HDs run like crap when they're completely filled. You'd be better off using your 160gb drive as your main drive.

It is probably system restore, the older the install is, the more restore points, the more disk space used.

yeah! do a disk cleanup and click on more options and delete your old system restore points. got myself an extra 30gb lately doing that.

also if you use hibernate you may have about 10gb being used up with that or just error reports can stack up!

I just ran a disk clean up and removed some error report files and removed about 900MB. Then after that and some other files I deleted, I still have only 741MB of free space.

Could it be the fragments? How would I go about fixing that?

did u click on the options to delete your restore points? it wont do it automatically, you'll have to do it yourself.

if your talking about bad sectors then you can't fix em. if you see fragments that are in use then you cant celete them without knowing what they are and what theyre linked to which could be anything.

of course it could always be spyware and not every antispyware software catches avery bit of spyware. i had spyware that my antivirus didnt catch until about 3 months after using the software i got it from. only after they found it themselves and added it to an update did i know about it. if you cant find nothing else them reformat if its not too much bother

I just turned off the system restore points and deleted them, that put me at 1.11GB. I then left the computer for about 20 minutes and it's now down to 987MB.

I also used the diagnostic tools for my hard drive to detect bad sectors and it turned out fine.

Your disk is inadequate for what you're trying to do with it. You need a larger disk.

johnz said:

Your disk is inadequate for what you're trying to do with it. You need a larger disk.

Click to expand...

Are you saying I should free up more space and then do a defrag? I don't have much else to delete. My only option would be to transfer most of my files from C: to D: and then defrag C: then transfer the files back.

redone632 said:

I just turned off the system restore points and deleted them, that put me at 1.11GB. I then left the computer for about 20 minutes and it's now down to 987MB.

I also used the diagnostic tools for my hard drive to detect bad sectors and it turned out fine.

Click to expand...

if your definately not doing anything then its got to be spyware of some sort.

does it still do it if you disconnect your internet?

redone632 said:

Are you saying I should free up more space and then do a defrag? I don't have much else to delete. My only option would be to transfer most of my files from C: to D: and then defrag C: then transfer the files back.

Click to expand...

You need to delete some things, or get a larger HD. You need 15%+ free space on a HD for decent performance. Running the HD as full as you are is like running XP with 128mb of ram. It can be done, but the computer runs like crap. I would use your 160gb disk as your O/S drive, and use the Raptor for data. A fast drive doesn't do any good if it's too full.

Edit:
I don't think you said which version of Vista you're running. It could be Shadow Copies getting created.

If it is spyware then I should be able to find the large file/folder that it is storing it in. I'll try Ad-Aware see if it finds anything and if anyone knows of a program that displays file and folder size of a hard drive that you can browse that would work too.

Thanks for all the help.

johnz said:

You need to delete some things, or get a larger HD. You need 15%+ free space on a HD for decent performance. Running the HD as full as you are is like running XP with 128mb of ram. It can be done, but the computer runs like crap. I would use your 160gb disk as your O/S drive, and use the Raptor for data. A fast drive doesn't do any good if it's too full.

Edit:
I don't think you said which version of Vista you're running. It could be Shadow Copies getting created.

Click to expand...

I think you're missing my problem. I'm trying to find the reason why I keep losing space, I'm almost positive that I should have nearly 9GB of free space on C: but something keeps stealing it and that's what I'm trying to figure out.

I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium. I saw something on Shadow Copies earlier in my search to find what was wrong but I can't quite remember where it is...

Try opening Task Manager, click Performance, goto Resource Monitor, then expand Disk. Look at the Writes heading, and see what's getting written to on the disk.

A post of mine from another thread...

Here's a copy of an email I sent along time ago. It mentions showing super hidden files. See if this helps you at all. I'm not the author of the primary information. I don't remember where I got it from...


I think I finally kicked that trogan's *** :^). I remember when Antivir copied it to quarantine. It said it couldn't remove it, but it could make a copy to store. I assume that was because the process was active. When I searched for svdhost.exe I couldn't find anything though. I looked on the web for revealing hidden files, and came across this:

Revealing the super hidden files
Microsoft has added many features to Windows XP to protect the critical files of the operating system. The system file checker, for instance, continually monitors the system files to ensure that no application will replace your system files with a version that Windows XP was not designed to work with. The new super hidden files feature allows Windows to protect itself even further by hiding some of its most critical files from the user. If they can't get to it, they can't hurt it, right?

Revealing the super hidden system files is not very difficult at all. You can uncheck the box on the list on the View tab of Folder Options, but where is the fun in that? Use the Registry Editor to turn this feature off:

1. Click on the Start button and select Run.
2. Type in regedit in the box and click OK to start up the Editor.
3. Once regedit appears, navigate through HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer\Advanced.
4. Right-click on ShowSuperHidden and select Modify.
5. Change the value to 1 and click OK to save your changes.

Now you will be able to see all of the files on your computer, including the super hidden system files.

This worked perfectly. svdhost.exe became visible, and I was able to rename it. I'll probably delete it tonight, but I would sure like to know exactly what's inside. It would be cool to decompile it, but I don't think I'd know what I was looking at even if I could.

Anyway, I thought this could be useful information to you all. I hadn't seen reference to this registry setting before, and It could be very helpful under certain circumstances. You'll probably want to hide the files again once you've done what you needed to do because it creates a lot of visual clutter, and makes navigating folders more difficult.

As an added note... Unchecking the hide system files box in folder views didn't reveal the trogan. I had to go into the registry to make the change. I mention this because they imply that using the folder view setting will reveal all files, but it doesn't.

We understand the problem. What we are trying to explain is that the amount of space files take up on disk increases as they become fragmented. Since your disk is likely highly fragmented, and you cannot defrag it because it is so full, the files will fragment more and more, thus taking up more and more space.

It might be something else, but fragmentation is definitely a possible cause for your problem.

I think I may have found the problem.

I downloaded TreeSize to try and find any abnormal folder sizes and I found that Google Desktop was indexing everything and stored a massive 3GB of files in AppData. I also found that TVersity is saving the transcoded videos that I have been streaming from my D: to my PS3. So whenever I'd leave the computer, I'd go watch something on the PS3 streamed from my computer. When I would come back I would of lost space since it was keeping the transcoded files which were totaling a massive 9GB.