sudden major hard drive increase

one day i had about 6 gigs left on my master drive then i restarted my computer and it was taking longer than usual to boot so i hit the reset button before it got to the log in screen. when it restarted i got a screen saying "windows didnt shut down properly" and so on and it told me to put in my windows disc to repair.

however, i didn't come across an option to repair but it gave me an option to diagnose the memory and i did with know problems detected. after that my computer started normally but my hard drive read to be with about 55 gb???

after a couple of times of restarting my computer (when needed) it went back to starting slow. my HD eventually went down to about 24 gb (from me adding files or whatever). it gets to the Microsoft progress bar and after that the screen is black for longer than usual then finally goes to the login screen.

this started close to about a week ago, but today i restarted my computer and it's right back up to about 55 gigs.

i don't notice anything missing but this is really strange

any clue?:confused

 

oh yeah im running windows vista32 and i did ascan for viruses and only came up with one from my rocketdock i think, maybe a free skin i downloaded or something. i also did a scan with spybot S&D, super anti spyware, and malwarebytes with no detections.

I've never had this happen before

 

please

 

I'm actually having this exact same problem...If you figured anything out, could you please let me know? Thanks.

 

My situation is much the same as adic27's. So here is a more in depth description. I noticed two weeks ago, after doing an avg disk scan, a spybot s&d scan, a windows defender scan, a disk scan and a defrag, that over the course of those two weeks my hard drive's usable space droped by about 3 or so gigs everyday, from about 60 to 30-something. This alarmed me, but doing further disk scans or disk assessments in defrag.exe showed that the hard drive used space was not increasing. However, I did this same procedure again a few days ago, and had about 35 or so gigs, but now, all of a sudden it is up to 50 gigs. Does this mean that my computer randomly decided to clear out some old restore points or temporary files or something? I looked up somewhere that upon defragging, spaces that were once used by NTFS memory in the computer as it moved files are cleared up after reboot, so the used space can change after a restart (typically i let my computer hibernate).

I have been noticing that my computer has been running a bit hot lately, but scans typically turn up nothing in viruses and nothing that can't be removed regarding other malware. I"m very worried that my hard drive might be crashing.

I have Vista Home Premium 32 bit Service pack 2 on a Sony Vaio VGN CR320E model. I cannot seem to find the model number of the hard drive itself, but please let me know if you need anymore information.

 

Also, I notice that this seems to happen around a week as well. I haven't noticed anything missing, after checking random folders and files, but I'm actually just really scared and unsure how to check if anything was actually lost. I also noticed that my computer has been running a bit slower, but this has also coincided with me installing and using the newest version of IE (ugh). i also did a disk check and told it to recover damaged sectors and repair errors (talking about 2 weeks ago, not more recently)

 

Just for a frame of reference: at my initial post, the free space was 50.1, now it is 49.6. I am finding this very strange, but it has only been these past 3 or so weeks that i've been checking my hard drive space daily, so for all I know this could be normal. I'm not tech savvy... at all...

 

It could be windows update downloading installing and then cleaning out but I would not expect to see fluctuations of 5GB

#1 rule BACKUP YOUR DATA.
If you haven't already done so then back up all your personal data. Its unlikly that this is caused by a dieing hard disk.

Download, install and run CCleanerfrom the download section of this site and see how you get on.

 

This morning the free space is up to 51.7. These slight fluctuations make sense if files are cleaned out after I shut down my computer rather than hibernate it, but a change of at least 10 gigs, I find very strange. According to http://efreedom.com/Question/3-150043/Sudden-Increase-Available-Hard-Drive-Space#comment-196715280

This can happen with Transactional NTFS. The free space is used for storing the transaction, once the transaction is committed the free space can be reclaimed.

Apparently, this is in the case if you move large chunks of file to your computer or I suppose you move things around in your computer. (Original questionby another user: I was copying large files over to my computer for video editing and keeping an eye on available hard drive space I knew I should have had just enough space to put everything. However, as I was getting close to filling up my hard drive, the available free space suddenly jumped by about 30GB. Any idea what happened?) I just want someone to tell me if I'm misunderstanding that information or that is a verifiable claim.

Would you happen to know of a diagnostic tool that would assess the health of my hard drive? While I do back up my stuff monthly, I just can't really afford to do much else if something is terribly wrong.

Thanks for the reply.

 

Most manufacturers have diagnostic software. What is the make and model of your drive?

You can always use the chkdsk command in comand prompt

chkdsk X: /f /r

Where X represents the letter of the partition you are checking for a basic scan.

 

Could be some new form of high jacking mal ware did you try a male ware scan.

http://majorgeeks.com/Malwarebytes_Anti-Malware_d5756.html
A lot of Anti Virus's and Spy Ware tools cant detect Malware

Check disk could be in order if you have not done it in a while.Windows has its won check disk scan
Go to your Run and type :chkdsk

 

I might have another issue: I had no idea typing chkdsk.exe on an elevated command prompt would just begin the process so I simply exited the command prompt (clicking the red x) to stop the process because I didn't want it to start at the time. I don't really understand how to use the command prompt effectively despite looking things up online so I tried the GUI method by right-clicking the drive and telling it to check the disk. Does this mean that I might have caused some errors on my disk?

I'm also having a lot of trouble finding information regarding the hard drive for my computer. Where would i find the manufacturer and model number? I checked system information and I can't seem to find it.

I will download that new malware removal tool. Does it work much better than AVG, spybot and windows defender for the identification and removal of malware?

 

Well best place too find the hard drive info is on the hard drive it self unless you took the sticker off your self.

I might recommend a program too you that is very good i used it for over two years now.
http://majorgeeks.com/Advanced_SystemCare_Free_d5927.html
Try this all in won tool.Give your Pc a boost and see what happens Its free too use.

How old is your HD
All so try Speccy it should telll you every thing that is on your computer its free
http://majorgeeks.com/Speccy_d6358.html

Malwarebytes Mainly search's for male ware But it does find stuff that most Anti Virus and spy ware programs cant find at the time.

 

I'm currently running check disk (not through the command prompt) and I've told it to recover sectors and not automatically fix errors because I'd like to view a list of the errors and have it complete the process upon restart (not sure if this is how it's done). I've noticed that the free space on my drive is actually rapidly dropping from 51.5 to 50.0 and now 49.7 since the process started 10 minutes ago... I have NO idea what the heck is going on.

 

Also, would the sticker be on the hard drive inside the computer or on the outside of the computer?

 

Sticker should be right on the up side of the hard drive

 

Here are the results of my disk scan. I found it strange that my disk space dropped to 49.5- this seems to happen every time i do a disk check (ex if I do multiple disk checks over a few days and it stops at a certain point), and it goes back up when i do a defrag a little bit, and then it jumps up a week or so later. Does checkdisk create a restore point that is deleted after a certain period of time.
"No problems were found on the device or disk. It is ready to use. If you removed the device or disk before all files were fully written to it, parts of some files might still be missing. If so, go back to the source and recopy those files to your device or disk."
- What does the second part of this message mean? Is this akin to me stopping the check disk in the middle of the process? How do I know that i've damaged sectors by stopping a disk check in the middle of when it is checking indexed files?

Further details-
Please see attached picture.

 

Do I have to pull my computer apart to find this sticker?I can't seem to find something detailing this incormation anywhere . Any other suggestions on where to find it?

 

I'll just say that sometimes errors in the file system can cause loss of disc space. When you run chkdsk /r it can correct the errors and free up the space. My guess is when you initially gained that 10-15gb it was due to Windows running a chkdsk, perhaps at startup, or one of the programs you were running initiated the chkdsk.

You could try a program like Windirstat to monitor your disk space for a week or two and see if any large files appear or disappear. It might give you and idea if a specific program is misbehaving. I think the fluctuations you are seeing now are not a big deal, perhaps temporary files.

*****
For the hard drive model number just right click C: drive in My Computer and select Properties and then the Hardware tab. It will probably start with Seagate/Maxtor or WDD for Western Digital.

 

hitachi hts 542525K9SA00

Apparently that is my hard drive make and model. It is about 3 years old now

I actually don't remember seeing a scheduled disk scan or anything being done when my hard drive jumped up to 51 GB, because the last one i did was about 2 weeks ago, and signaled an incremental decline in the free space of my hard drive. Do vista computers typically do a very fast diskcheck behind the scene at startup?

Regarding the disk check (via commant prompt) procedure that I stopped midway- is it very likely that I lost data or caused a disk error? If this disk check that I posted earlie stated there were no errors, does this mean that I didn't lose data or cause a disk error by stopping the previous disk check midway? If that is not the way to check for corrupted or lost data, what is a better way to do so?

Thank you very much for you help sach2, GoldenSkull and Tueur

 

Firstly I think Malware is highly unlikely.

As Sach2 says the fluctuations that you are experiencing are pretty normal. Your HD continually moves stuff around, creates temp files erases them etc all as part of normal operation. Personally I dont think you have much to worry about.

Hitachi drives use a diagnostic program called DFT or Drive Fitness Test you can google and download that tool to check you disk thoroughly.

Chkdsk looks for a number of things but when you run it from comand prompt it is important that you add "/F" which adds the Full check and will scan the disk surface for errors (This can take a while) and also add "/R" which will tell it to repair any issues it finds.

As far as exiting before it finishes, I think it is unlikely to do any damage to your PC.

Malwarebytes is probably the best antimalware tool out there but it does not have an active scan option unless you buy the full version.

In short if DFT and chkdsk come back clean I dont think you need to worry.

 

I guess up to 5 gigs fluctuation seemed normal to me. A 20-30 gig fluctuation did not seem to be however, but this could have to do with the higher amount of space I allow the computer to allot for backup and restore points. So then what you are saying will make sense.

I will download the Folder monitoring tool, to see what folders are changing size so rapidly and look up the DFT.

I don't think it is malware either, but I suppose, just to be safe, I'll try that trial version of malwarebytes.

While I thought chkdsk , like defrag, was modified in Vista to work in small blocks to allow for easy termination of the procedure, there are just some posts in other forums that made stopping a diskcheck seem like a stupid thing to do, saying that it could damage sectors. I can show you the links I was reading if you'd like (some of them were XP related though). If you have any more information on this, please let me know.