Hard drive eating up space?

I have a dell e1705 with windows xp. For the past couple of weeks, I seem to repeatedly run out of space on my hard drive unexpectedly wondering where the space has gone because I didn't think I installed much stuff or rendered enough videos to take up all the free space. I looked through some other threads that seem to show some programs to diagnose where your space is being used?

My pc will warn me: low disk space. I will move video or picture files to my external hard drive and clear up a few gigs and then a couple days later it warns me again: low disk space. I recently moved all my pictures from my pc to my external hard drive because i ran out of space completely, and cleared up 14.6 gigs of space. Without making videos, downloading or installing anything or to my knowledge doing anything to take up more space it is slowly decreasing. I now have 11.3 gigs of free space on my C drive. I don't know where it is going; it just seems my hard drive is eating free space?

I would appreciate some help with this problem.

Thanks

 

Give Space Sniffer a try.

Look for large file(s) where you don't expect them. most of the time when HD space suddenly disappears it one or two large files being created by a particular program. I wouldn't delete anything from the Windows folder. Post back if you find a large file you are unsure if it is safe to delete and need advice.

 

Thanks

So I ran the program and after it scanned for a while and a big block showed up with over 38 gigs as a file titled "tvdebug.log"... I exported a file report (which was over 3000 KB so I copied the first part of it) and attached it to this post where it shows tvdebug.log internet file. I searched that file and it looks like it may be something to do with Zone Alarm?..which I downloaded at the end of the year because my Trend Micro Internet Security ended at the end of 2009..so rather than buy their newest version I downloaded a couple of free recommended computer virus protection programs I found on Major Geeks. Avast for virus and Zone Alarm for firewall. It looks like this file has caused some problems before.

So where do I go from here to fix this little prob?

(Thanks for your help!)

 

Have you tried running Ccleaner to clear out the junk files and clean the registry, this is a common cause of your problem.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/CCleaner_Slim_d4191.html

You can let it clean all that it find (it's very safe) also run the registry cleaner.

 

THANKS SO MUCH!

I believe it is fixed. I shot back up to 49 gigs of free space after fixing and removing that ridiculous tvdebug.log.

I certainly appreciate the help.

 

Thanks Plodr.

Dgbarger, if your pictures are important you might want to copy them back to your HD to have an extra copy. It is always wise to have duplicates of files that you really value. With the Zone Alarm problem fixed you may have sufficient space to keep them on your HD again.

 

Thanks Sach2 and Plodr. (Thanks Bionic Belgian for the info, however I had already run Ccleaner before I came to Major Geeks and made this thread and it did not fix the problem...but Ccleaner is a gem.)

Thanks Sach2, I will be backing up everything soon. I have two WD external drives (500g my book & 500 g my passport). I have been meaning to back things up for a while but just haven't gotten around to it. So I will def be having a couple of copies of everything.

Thank you.