my hard drive space is dissappearing

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by rleveret, Sep 11, 2007.

  1. rleveret

    rleveret Private E-2

    I started out with a 500 gb SATA hard drive and i'm running vista. I have a 2.0 ghz intel core duo and 2 gb of ram. When I first got the computer about a month ago I put 22 gb worth of music and 5 or 6 gb of files/games from my old computer on the new one. Every couple of days when I check "my computer" there are a few less gb of free space than there was the day before. I should have 415 - 420gb free, "my computer" says I have 351gb free. I've tried defragmenting, I ran assess tree, jDiskReport, and another scanner called scn2. I'm not sure where to go from here, they haven't shown any files or folders out of the ordinary. My virus scanner is eset's NOD32. Any ideas at all. I'm stumped.
     
    rleveret, Sep 11, 2007
    #1
  2. Adrynalyne

    Adrynalyne Guest

    System Restore points.

    What OS ya using?
     
    Adrynalyne, Sep 12, 2007
    #2
  3. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    As mentioned above by Adryn, its likely to be Vista's System Restore and its Shadow Copy feature do use a fair bit of HD space if available, Vista btw uses or allocates 15% of the total space for system restore, larger drive more to backup ( it will if a drive starts becoming close to full dump older restore points ), but open your drive up, then Right Click and choose Properties > Disk Cleanup > More Options and click under System Restore and Shadow Copies Clean Up, this will remove all but last system restore point.

    *note only do this if your PC is working well with no issues as the last restore point may not be the best*

    If that does clear up the large chunk of missing space then as Vista does not have the System Restore slider to allow you to allocate the % of HD space to use manually, then you will need to goto a command line to adjust this figure.

    Quote from another post of mine in different thread.
     
    DavidGP, Sep 12, 2007
    #3
  4. rleveret

    rleveret Private E-2

    Thanks, it Looks like that may have fixed it. I cleared out the shadow copies and that put me back about where I should be. You are way more helpful than gateway tech support. Is there a certain amount of memory that's a good amount to alot to this feature? I changed it to 10 gb, I have probably more memory than i'm ever going to need, I just don't like it dissapearing from a weeks work of email checking.
     
    rleveret, Sep 12, 2007
    #4
  5. ibbonkers

    ibbonkers First Sergeant

    holy krikey I just emptied my restore points and went from 57 gig used to 22.3 gigs used. That is WAY too much.

    P.S. resized it to 4 gig thanks for the excellent info :)
     
    ibbonkers, Sep 12, 2007
    #5
  6. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    The best amount is what you would be comfortable with, and 10GB seems resonable, but what I would do is after a week or so open up System Restore, then click the choose a different restore point and just look to see how many restore points are created, if you have around 2-4 then I would say thats adequate.

    If not just up the sys restore space allocated a few GBs
     
    DavidGP, Sep 13, 2007
    #6
  7. sosaman

    sosaman Sergeant Major

    yeh, i freed up 22.8 gbyte myself. i have one small problem. what is supposed to happen when i hit "press Ctrl+Shift+Enter" (as nothing happens)?
     

    Attached Files:

    sosaman, Sep 13, 2007
    #7
  8. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member


    If you dont get a UAC prompt then you have turned this feature off.
     
    DavidGP, Sep 13, 2007
    #8
  9. sosaman

    sosaman Sergeant Major

    well, i have the uac on (as far as i know, and i get it on other things), i haven't disabled anything yet. with you viewing the screenshot (cmd.exe), is that where i enter the command (to change the restoration size)? thx, sos
     
    sosaman, Sep 13, 2007
    #9
  10. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    Yes enter the command at the prompt, but the 4GB figure is just an example, this you can change to a figure of your choosing ( note Vista will by default allocate 15% of your HD space to SR, ie. 100GB HD = 15GB SR space, but as HD space becomes less then SR will adjust its allocation automatically to free up space for your files ).
     
    DavidGP, Sep 14, 2007
    #10

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