Hard Drive Free Space

Hi, I'm having a slight issue with my C drives space, it seems to be slowly decreasing every hour or so.

I used SpaceSniffer to find out why my hard drive was pretty filled so I deleted some old files and cleared out a lot of space but the free space is slowly decreasing.

So far I have lost about 500MB in less than 1 hour and I have no clue where the 500MB went. Is there any program that tracks your hard drive usage so I can identify where the 500MB went?

For example: a program displays that 400MB went to folder X and 100MB went to folder Y in the recent hour (or something like that).

Thank you!

 

helloworldqq...

Try downloading and installing this:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Everything_d7787.html

It's free. Download and scan your main drive. Then sort by the date. Look for large files that seem to be related somehow that were created or modified today.

There is a virus that used to be around that would fill recycle bins and essentially completely shut down machines by filling the hard drive until the machine couldn't function...

In Everything, use the search bar at the top to see what's in the Recycle Bin if you don't find anything strange amongst todays files. Just type "Recycle Bin" in the search bar.

 

helloworldqq...

You aren't by chance running a cleaner set to wipe your free space are you? While the cleaner wipes the free space it will fill the empty hard drive with 1s and 0s and during the process the hard drive space will appear to be decreasing if you are viewing a meter, etc. When it's over the hard drive space will appear correctly again...

 

Nope, the computer is just idle or I'm just surfing and when I check the C drive space it's much less than it would normally decrease (like 100MB decrease in couple minutes)

 

I forgot to mention, I hardly turn off the computer... when I'm done using I put it in sleep mode.

I actually just gave the computer a complete shutdown and restarted and I gained around 1G of space... is this normal?

 

Download: http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/

It will show you where everything is.

 

Need to see where the data is going before it could be said that getting back the space was normal. What folders are growing the fastest?

PSCO2007 is right about TreeSize Free. It's the best for getting a good look at which directories are growing in size. Open it and scan your main drive. Write down the amounts in the main directories and then rescan the drive after about 15 minutes...

 

I see something similar when the Windows defrag process is running in the background. You could check in Task Manager if defrag is running when you are seeing this effect. It could be that other background processes can cause the same effect, such as Windows using its page file. The fact that the space is recovered when you reboot pretty well confirms it's something along those lines and not some virus thingy.

 

My guess at this stage is that Windows is increasing the size of your page file.

How much RAM does your computer have?