Lost Hard Drive Space

Turn back System restore on and periodically ask it to delete every file except the latest one. That is what I do and I have about 113GB free space. That way you are covered in emergencies.

* Even when you perform a clean installation, Vista usually backs up the previous installation, if there was one, in Windows.old. It's safe to delete, though I recommend looking through it for any files you may want to keep first. That should restore a LOT of space.

* 1GB is small but OK as long as you are not relying on Shadow Copies (Vista Business and Ultimate only), which requires considerably more room to be effective.

* See this post in the forum sticky for more tips.

Hope this helps,
John

What did you do to perform the clean install? From a Vista disc, from the Recovery partition, something else? Did you wipe the drive first? Did you eliminate the primary C partition, then create a new one, then install Vista?

Since all those installations don't add up to 70 MBs of space, then it appears like you may have done a parallel install, possibly in an attempt to save your files on the drive. If so, you now have double the amount of Windows files..

If not, then have you tried temporarily disabling System Restore to eliminate all of the space used by SR, restarted the computer and re-enable SR again.

Just some thoughts.

Grif

My laptop has an 80 GB hard drive. Sweet laptop from Dell, the XPS 1210. However, when I upgraded to Vista from Windows, I've found myself quickly running out of hard disk space. At times I'm running on a couple of gigs. Sometimes my hard disk is RUNNING OUT OF SPACE without me doing anything. There have been times when my hard disk has run down to 2mb, that's right 2MB of space. I just feel that there is a lot of space that's not accounted for, but I'm learning to try that tree program and find out where the large portion of space is going.

Somehow I don't think it really is 2mb of space, it must be some weird issue. But it was annoying having the popup come up all the time and experience some lag. I actually ended up buying a small passport size portable 160 gig western digital external just so I wouldn't run out of space.

I'm running an acer Aspire 5050, dual-boot with Vista and ubuntu. I had the drive split about even, but decided to allocate more space to windows because it's going to be used for games. so I removed the linux partition, reinstalled linux, and resized the windows partition in linux. But now, I have the following problem:

Linux says I have 14.4 GB free in my 59.9 GB windows volume. I should have around 40 GB free. When I check it's propertied in linux, it says only 18.3 GB are used.

In Vista, it says I have 14.3GB free on a 30.7GB drive, both in the properties of the drive, and the drive tree program. But in the partitioner, it says I have 59.8 GB free!

Where could this space be going? Do I need to wipe it clean and do a reinstall of EVERYTHING???

Thanks in advance
Tyler

That's one of the risks when resizing Windows partitions, especially when using a Linux utility to do so...it doesn't always work as you would expect. Check in Disk Management (an administrative tool in the Control Panel) and see what it's reporting...how large is each partition and is there any unallocated space remaining? If Vista sees the 20GB as unallocated you could just create a third partition and use it for multimedia storage or direct your game installations there. (Sorry...you can't extend the primary OS partition in Windows.)

A second thought it see if the partitioner reports it all being FAT32 or NTFS, or if it detects multiple formats on a single partition...immediate sign of failure. You may be able to split the partition, then re-merge the space, but I wouldn't hold out much hope on it going smoothly.

John

I found your thread while trying to diagnose a problem I too am having with my IBM T42 running XP Professional. My C drive seems to continually fill up even though I keep all my documents, music, and the majority of applications on my D drive. I sought to figure out where all the disk was getting eaten up. I may sound like a novice here, but is it normal for the c:\windows\msapp\sysinfo folder to be 30 GB?? What are all these .cap files anyway and why do I need them?

C:\windows\msapp is not a default directory under Windows Vista, and I don't believe it's a default IBM directory either, meaning it was created by some third-party application.

As for the .cap files, it could be a number of things but most commonly it's used for data captures, such as those from Ethereal and Wireshark. Those are basically programs that monitor and log all network (and internet) traffic for various purposes.

Double-check that directory and the let us know what else is in it. If you find any executables be sure to list them. In addition, perform a full scan with your preferred antivirus and antispyware scanners. It could be harmless, but it's not normal and could be caused by a malware infection. (Better to be safe than sorry.)

Let us know.
John

I just finished a computer a week ago, 500 Gb hard drive. After a week and installing 3 games as well as my school programs, I had used 130 Gb's of space. Read this thread and tried shutting off System Restore, boom, went from 353-420. I'll just make a manual back up and keep it here so I can turn it off for now. Thanks!

I have a four month old vista laptop that was missing almost 30GB of space and had no idea where it was. It seems that when it defrag. it shadowed the files in a folder. When I went to disk cleanup, advanced and deleted the shadow folder, I gained 25GB of free space. Shut off system restore, turned back on and set a new restore point, as everything is working good now. I gained back almost 29GB of space.
Problem is that that folder seems to need to get deleted often to keep the space on the drive. Everytime I use use the laptop, I seem to lost hard drive space way too fast.
What's up with vista shadow anyway, and do you really need it?

Vista's Shadow Copies feature enables the automatic backup/restore of personal files/folders just like system data by tying into System Restore, as well as facilitating manual backups/restores. You can disable the service to reduce the number of processes running and keep it from taking up more disk space (it can approach 20% by default), but for some it has come in handy after they mistakenly deleted their company's stock portfolio and didn't have a backup. Question becomes how many times do you say "Oops!" after emptying the Recycle Bin or editing a document.

John

How do you go about turning off Shadow Copies?

I have a 2 month old Lenovo laptop with a 105GB HD and am having the same problems - my HD seems to be "missing" more than half it's space! I have deleted all but the previous restore point, changed the space available to restore to 2 GB and deleted all the extra files using CCleaner, yet when I run Treesize, it can only account for 47GB of space while the drive itself is 120GB with a usable size of 105GB. What next? Where is all that space going? Any ideas?

Shadow is tied in with system restore. What it is suppose to do is when you shut system restore off to delete passed restore pts. it SHOULD also remove shadow files also which are hidden in a different folder. I feel it did NOT do that with me. Had no restore pts. but was still missing over 15GB of space.

Try this if your pc is working good.

Shut off system restore, in start type ( disk cleaner ), in advanced delete shadow files. say yes when asked.

IMPORTANT... Go back to system restore and make a new restore point.

So far I have gained over 20GB of free space back and I do have system restore on, I just watch the drive , so far disk space is accounted for.

Thanks for the reply - turns out that the missing space was as a result of Lenovo's Rescue and Recover module which creates system back ups right on the hard drive, thus taking up huge amounts of space without telling you. By turning off the Backup option, I went from 18.5 GB of free space to 59.8 GB of free space! Granted this is only a viable option if you have another place to back up your computer, but at least I now can account for all my hard drive's space!

Brand Name of the computer? Which Vista version?

Most importantly, have you tried all the suggestions in this thread?

Hope this helps.

Grif

We have a post about that there.

Thanks for the update...

Hey All:

Well, I've read through this thread and disabled System Restore; I gained back only 3gb of space. I have a 149gb hard drive and my media, documents and program folders only take up about 120gb total. I know my way around a computer, but I'm nowhere near IT level and I don't want to screw up my laptop, but I do want my space back, and I cannot find it. I did find this folder: Computer/OS(C:)/windows/winsxs/Backup but it's only 346mb.

Can anyone advise me further in layman's terms what to do, or possibly be willing to help me on the side? I'm unemployed right now and cannot afford to send this thing out again.

Thank you.

Try the TREESIZE (free version) and more noted above? You didn't tell.