Disk Cleanup

[ehyouwhat]

Yet more trouble with my laptop, although this time I think the issue might be the cause of all my problems.

My Sony Vaio laptop has a 60gb hard disk, and by default this space is shown as two drives, C and D. Disk C appears as a 27.9gb drive and disk D appears as a 20.9gb drive, So I've no idea where the other 11gb is!? All the main systems (windows, office, etc) run from the C disk.

Recently I have been getting warnings stating that disk C is running short on space, even though I can't see how there is possibly anywhere near that much stuff on it. I run a disk cleanup check as advised and find that I can free up between 400mb and 3gb of space, so I continue with the cleanup. Fine.

Then an hour or two later, I get a message to say the disk is running short of space again. This also happens everytime I switch the computer on.

I have deleted around 2gb of files, video and unused programs from the disk (and emptied the recycle bin) so I KNOW there is space on the drive, but yet the problem still occurs. The amount of free space on the C drive can also vary hugely when the warning message appears, from as much as 198mb to as little as 1kb.

As I say I cannot believe that the drive has anyway near as much content on it as it should be able to hold, and yet it still says I'm running short.

Could this be some kind of virus?

[Big Al.]

Have you cleaned out your temporary drive recently?

I also found that if you had a lot of part downloaded files (films etc.) that you are still working with these also take up storage, big time.

[shadytree]

Download crapcleaner and it will clean all the crap off your machine. Excellent program for freeing up wasted memory.

www.ccleaner.com

[SlidingSideways]

Sounds like your page file is running a little wild.
Right click on "My Computer" and click on Properties.
Click the Advanced tab, and then the settings button under the Performance section.
CLick on the Advanced tab, then on the Change button under "Virtual Memory" and post a screen print of it.

Which drive is the page file set to use?
Is "Custom Size", "System Managed" or "No Paging File" selected?
If Custom is selected, what are the Initial and Maximum sizes set to?

Jim.

[twister]

1 and a bit gigs of that missing space is probably accounted for by the 1000MB/1024MB=1GB difference in drive space calculation - the drive manufacturer defines 1GB as 1000MB, whereas Windows defines it as 1024MB, so a 60GB (60*1000MB) drive will show up in Windows as 58.6GB. That now makes the missing space 10GB, not 11GB.

Some laptops (and more than a few desktops) are configured with system restore data and repair tools stored on a separate area of the drive which doesn't show up in Windows. Not sure that'd account for quite as much space as you appear to be missing, but it's always worth checking to see how much space is being used by any hidden partitions.

It may simply be that, for whatever reason, Sony have configured the system not to fill the drive with partitions. I recently did a "nuke and reinstall from scratch" repair on a Packard Bell desktop, for which the OEM system restore discs configured it with a 6GB C drive and no other partitions. After becoming increasingly pissed off with the OEM restore process (multiple CDs to install XP, of which the first disc wasted about half an hour installing Win98 just so it could then run the XP installer off the remaining discs...) which always resulted in installing a copy of XP which never quite worked properly, I got the owner to buy a retail copy of XP which installed perfectly first time and, as a nice bonus, revealed during the initial drive partitioning process, that the PC was actually fitted with a 30GB drive...


Agree with all the other advice you've been given, it's surprising how quickly the crud can build up, especially if you're using the default settings for things like your swap file, browser cache etc.

[bigdods]

ehyouwhat said:

. The amount of free space on the C drive can also vary hugely when the warning message appears, from as much as 198mb to as little as 1kb.

198MB is not a lot, your pagefile will be bigger than that ! So every time you delete something pagefile is probably grabbing it. I usually work on a 10% minimum of free space on any given drive . So you need about 3GB min free space on your C drive. ANd if you have some space on your D drive relocate some data (music, vids etc) over to the D drive to free up some C drive space.

You dont mention memory - if you have <512MB then your pagefile could be pretty big

I agree with previous post, get ccleaner from download.com it will get rid of a lot of junk. Clean out old temp files, partial downloads etc.

Also uninstall any old programs that you dont use any more, they really eat disk space

Oh and install AVG and run a full virus scan while you are at it !

[ehyouwhat]

SlidingSideways said:

Sounds like your page file is running a little wild. Right click on "My Computer" and click on Properties. Click the Advanced tab, and then the settings button under the Performance section. CLick on the Advanced tab, then on the Change button under "Virtual Memory" and post a screen print of it. Which drive is the page file set to use? Is "Custom Size", "System Managed" or "No Paging File" selected? If Custom is selected, what are the Initial and Maximum sizes set to? Jim.

Can't do a screenshot of the details as I have no picture hosting account, but I can tell you what the details said:

The page file is set to use drive C.
Custom Size is selected
Initial Size is 756mb and Maximum Size is 1512mb

There is also a section that refers to total paging for all drives. Here the minimum value is 2mb, recommended value is 753mb and currently-used value is 756mb.

There is no way I can have anywhere near a full capacity on the drive, I mean there must be AT LEAST several Gig of space still there. The only files remaining on that drive are now program files and windows files, as I deleted around 600mb of iTunes files and MP3s to try and free up some space.

I have always been more understanding of hardware issues than software issues when it comes to computers, but even I realise that deleting files doesn't seem to make any difference to how much space I have available. The computer is currently telling me that I have 0mb of space available, which is obviously frustrating and troublsome.

The computer has 512mb of memory. The D drive appears to only have a few empty Sony folders on it (the laptop is a Sony Vaio), which take up around 3mb. As such the D drive is showing up as being 20.9gb in size, of which all 20.9gb is available. I have never used the D drive at all.

I shall also try and download crapcleaner to see if that makes any difference. I am at pains to delete any further programs or files from the C drive as, to my mind, there should be maybe 10gb or so of space still on there.

Cheers for all the help so far!

[twister]

Have you error-checked each partition? Hasn't happened to me since making the switch to XP, but in the 2K and earlier days there were times when the partitioning data would get corrupted just enough to make the OS think the free space was lower than it should be, without actually preventing me from accessing any of the files on the partition.

[thepassenger]

If when you get the low disk space warning appear explorer is adament that C: has plent of space (1Gb+ at least) then I'm affraid to sat Windows is quite probably broken.

Try crapcleaner, try AVG (virus is a possibility) and SpyBot S&D (spyware is also a possibility) if none of them find anything start backing up your stuff and blast windows with the restore CD(s).

[Wildfire]

Yep I have a similar thing. I am missing around 8Gb off my 80Gb HDD, I know it will appear smaller, but when Iwas leafing around with XP Pro, I found ahidden partition. Basically this will reset the computer to how it came out of the box. A Godsend when I was fixing my friend's laptop, which was in Japanese with No CD. If you are competent then you can kill it. I'm keeping it on until the warranty runs out.