Where Did my Hard Drive Space Go?

[Jason Dunn]

<p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1218468819.usr1.jpg" border="1" /></p><p>Don't you just hate it how, over time, hard drives fill up? I'm pretty strict about my data, keeping a tight reign on it (I should sit down with John Dvorak and give him some tips, <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2326243,00.asp" target="_blank">he needs them</a>). On my workstation and media editing station, I have 150 GB Western Digital Raptor hard drives - very fast, but not especially spacious in comparison to the 500 GB drives that ship in even the most humble desktop PC sold today. Normally this isn't a problem, but this morning my workstation PC report that I only had 11 GB of storage space left. Normally I hover around 30 GB or so of free space, so this was rather surprising. I did a disk cleanup, after deleting everything in the Foldershare Trash folder, and got back up to 16 GB of free space. But where was the rest of it? <MORE /></p><p>The first thing I did was to try to get a handle on where the 139 GB of actual storage available on my drive was going. The Users folder? 55.1 GB. Not too surprising given that there's 35 GB of photos in there, 9 GB of documents and files, and 1 GB of files on my desktop. Figure the other 10 GB or so include my Outlook OST file (I use an Exchange server) and other assorted user files. What about Program Files? 13.3 GB in total - and the biggest folders in there are two games, totalling 9 GB. The Windows directory? 13 GB. There are no other folders on the hard drive any bigger than 100 MB outside these three directories. So where is my other 42 GB of storage?</p><p>In the XP days there were some little freeware programs that would help you visualize where your storage space went to, but in my searches this morning for something similar that worked on Vista, I could only find shareware programs costing $25 to $35. Is there really no generous soul out there that has created a free tool to do this job? I feel like there's almost no good free or cheap indy software out there any more - all the free tools are Web-based, and no one wants to develop applications for the desktop any more.</p><p>So where should I look for my missing 42 GB of storage? Suggestions welcome - although I may have already tried it. ;-)</p>

[marlof]

I do know that the system restore points can happily chew away disk space. I've switched to Vista, and during the installation of applications, I saw something eat away large portions of my free hard disk space next to the space the apps took. In the end, I deleted all but the latest restore points and reclaimed over 50 GB of disk space... That said, I can't imagine system restore points causing all that lost space on your drives, since that would amount to a larger percentage than the maximum setting.

[The Yaz]

Jason,

Is this the machine that you do your video editing on? I know that my Vista box suffered with space issues (its a basic setup with 160gig drive and 2gig ram.

I was working with ULead Movie Fatory and the drive lost 40gig after one coding. I believe Movie Factory cached part of the hard drive as a temp file during the encoding but didn't clear it out when it was done. I didn't find anywhere in the program to force it to delete the temp file, but after I ununstalled it and ran disk cleanup and got it back.

Steve

[Rob Cannon]

http://windirstat.info/

It's free and works great on Vista.

[riley4077]

Give SequoiaView a try.

Simple and free, best of all it gives a visual representation of where the file size is.

The bigger the block the more space it takes up on your hard drive.

http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/visualization/sequoiaview//

[Paladin27]

SpaceMonger is another program similiar to the one above. The old v1.4 is still free and works just fine even in Vista, plus no install required, just run the EXE.

http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/v1x.php

[Hooch Tan]

http://windirstat.info/

It's free and works great on Vista.

Argh. You beat me to it. For freeware, it's pretty much the best space visualization program out there. One thing I've noted when it starts coming down to disappearing space, I don't believe that windirstat properly reports File allocation space having it show up as (unknown).

If it's not visible, and System Restore isn't the culprit (being super hidden folders, afaik), the only other thing I can think of is the MFT for your drive. That is if you've stored a significant amount of files on your hard drive lately. Some defragmentation programs are able to correct this but I don't know of any free ones offhand that can do it.

[David Horn]

Fire off a search along the lines of *.* size:>100,000KB

You'll have to navigate to "Computer -> Hard Disk" for this to work. For some absolutely insane reason, Microsoft removed the direct link to the advanced search tool from the Start Menu. So now you have to start a search, wait for the results to trundle in, then "Search Pane" and then "Advanced Search" to simply get the same window.

Seriously considering moving to Mac, which is ironic since I suspect Microsoft removed the link purely to pander to Apple's lawyers.

[Filip Norrgard]

Windirstat that was mentioned already is a good start. :)

It can be that shadow copies are taking up some space, but also system restores which you can clean up (all but the recent) using the system cleanup tool (under the More Options tab).

Another possbility is that Windows-on-Windows is consuming space if you are running a lot of 32-bit programs in 64-bit Vista. But then the Windows directory should be visibly large...

[Civisi]

SpaceMonger is another program similiar to the one above. The old v1.4 is still free and works just fine even in Vista, plus no install required, just run the EXE.

http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/v1x.php

This one is my pick too.

My first thought is Vista's "Restore to previous version" feature. Each time you edit a photo, it's probably keep a previous version of it.

[Jeremy Charette]

Shadow Copy.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/shadow-copy.aspx

http://www.wikihow.com/Reduce-Shadow-Copy-on-Windows-Vista

Another space hog: WinSXS

http://www.winvistaclub.com/f16.html

[bcre8v2]

Fire off a search along the lines of

You'll have to navigate to "Computer -> Hard Disk" for this to work. For some absolutely insane reason, Microsoft removed the direct link to the advanced search tool from the Start Menu. So now you have to start a search, wait for the results to trundle in, then "Search Pane" and then "Advanced Search" to simply get the same window.

Seriously considering moving to Mac, which is ironic since I suspect Microsoft removed the link purely to pander to Apple's lawyers.

Thanks, David!

I discovered over 6 GB of files that I had burned to CD or DVD that were never erased after using the Windows Vista Burning process....

-Steve

[baralong]

I use scanner (from here http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/) on prety much every maching I use. Free and works great with Vista.

Also don't forget the built in "Disk Cleanup" it'll tell you where a bunch of space is used and also remove it for you

[onlydarksets]

Windows error reporting - I found over 4GB of reports in there.

Also, as mentioned, check for abandoned temp files from video conversions.

[rck]

One other place to consider is the Recycle Bin if you are using media extenders. I found that if you are using a media extender like an Xbox 360 to delete the video from your Video Library (not Recorded TV section; that does not seem to be an issue) Vista will leave the deleted video in hidden folders in the Recycle Bin associated with Mcx account. Since I could not find a way to empty the Recycle Bin from the Mcx extender account through the media extender or the normal administration tools, I had to care fully delete them manually. I now only delete video from the Video Library when I am logged on directly on Media Center PC. Hopefully this helps.

[bmhome1]

TreeSize freeware version offers depth beyond any other drive space profiling tool to display whole partition's individual files of any type, including hidden and system, rendered as bar graphs and pie-charts, each clickable drilling down directories into single items.

[Jason Dunn]

http://windirstat.info/ It's free and works great on Vista.

Sweet! I remember using that years ago...great to see that it works on Vista!

[Jason Dunn]

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone - this morning I was shocked to see my system reporting only 2 GB free...and I really hadn't added much of anything to it. I I used WinDirStat to poke around, but nothing made sense - the program was reporting I had 85 GB or so used up on drive C: yet Windows was reporting only 2 GB free...and from the 139 GB original partition, that means the math simply didn't add up.

I purged the system restore points, which includes shadow copies, and now I have 41 GB free. I could have sworn I did that earlier, but evidently not - what's funny is that normally when I run the Vista Cleanup wizard, I select "All users on this computer" but that requires a UAC prompt...so I've been using the "my files only" option lately, and didn't realize until just now that what happens is that the "More Options" tab doesn't show up if you to the My Files Only option...so I had forgotten about purging that part of the file system.

What's interesting to note is that WinDirStat still shows me as having used up 85 GB of storage...meaning that it can't measure the system restore or shadow copy space taken up.

Mystery solved. :)

[bmhome1]

TreeSize was the only space profiler that handled hidden and system files in Vista well for me, including directories access blocked.

[phoenixag]

Hi Jason,

I didn't see you thread at first otherwise I would have replied sooner. I faced this very problem on my Vista machine a year ago. I found an easy way to fix it, which I am sure will help others as well.

It seems sometimes Vista goes crazy with its shadow copies and system restore files and starts taking up huge amounts (upwards of 40GB) of space!

To curtail this, you need to follow the steps outlined below. They may be long, but are very effective.

Btw, In Windows XP increasing or decreasing the available space to system restore was no more complex than opening the System window in Control panel, clicking the system restore tab, then clicking the settings button and adjusting a slider bar to increase or decrease the space.

In Windows Vista this option has now disappeared. the whole process of enlarging or reducing system restore space has become more complex. Instead of a simple slider bar all such alterations must now be done via command line option.

To see how much space system restore is actually taking up you need to use the Volume Shadow Copy Service Administration Tool (vssadmin, for short), which runs from an elevated command prompt as follows:

1/ Click Start

2/ From the Start menu Click All programs followed by Accessories

3/ On the Accessories menu Right Click on the Command Prompt option

4/ From the drop Down menu that appears, click the Run as administrator option

5/ When the Command Prompt window opens type: vssadmin list shadowstorage and Press Enter

6/ The results should read something like this:

C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin list shadowstorage

vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool

(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.

Shadow Copy Storage association

For volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{db8e056a-6294-11db-9f9f-806e6f6e6963}\

Shadow Copy Storage volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{db8e056a-6294-11db-9f9f-806e6f6e69

63}\

Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 197.766 MB

Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 400 MB

Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 2.092 GB

7/ In this example the C: drive is 19.5GB in size. The currently used storage space is 197.766MB and the Maximum space allocated for System restore is 2.092GB.

8/ The current stored system restore points are 2. this can be found out by using the vssadmin list shadows command.

9/ In my opinion the 2.092GB Maximum shadow copy storage space is quite acceptable for this size of partition. However, the larger the drive/partition the more space will, inevitably, be allocated for system restore points.
Reducing the Allocated Space

To reduce the allocated space we need to use the Resize option in the form of:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[here add the drive letter]: /For=[here add the drive letter]: /Maxsize=[here add the maximum size]

Let us assume that we wished to have a maximum size of 2GB from this particular partition/drive. The command line option would look something like this:

C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=2GB

So to put this in to practice you proceed as follows:

1/ Click Start

2/ From the Start menu Click All programs followed by Accessories

3/ On the Accessories menu Right Click on the Command Prompt option

4/ From the drop Down menu that appears, click the Run as administrator option

5/ When the Command Prompt window opens type: vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[here add the drive letter]: /For=[here add the drive letter]: /Maxsize=[here add the maximum size] and Press Enter

6/ if all goes well you should see a message saying 'Successfully resized the shadow copy storage association

7/ Your System Restore shadow storage has now been resized


Please let me know if that works for you. You can regularly clear out the system restore files, or use this method to keep some files but keep the overall size in check! :)

[Jason Dunn]

It seems sometimes Vista goes crazy with its shadow copies and system restore files and starts taking up huge amounts (upwards of 40GB) of space! To curtail this, you need to follow the steps outlined below. They may be long, but are very effective.

Yeah, that's exactly what the problem was. I appreciate you giving such detailed instructions, but I think it would be faster for me to just purge the system restore points and shadow copy files every now and then. :)

[Skyforum]

Man, I have been working on this for weeks. I have been to just about every tech site on the net and I couldn't find an answer. Where the heck was all my space going on my C partition on my Windows 2003? At one point, I was down to less than 30 megabytes! I deleted all the KB files, I searched and removed all the IIS files etc etc and the space just kept disappearing.....

I finally gave up trying to find someone else that could tell me what to do and went looking for myself.

The answer is so SIMPLE that only a tow truck driver could figure it out!!!!

Go to search / advanced options / select "files larger than 1 meg" leave all the other boxes blank and hit the start button.

Sort by size and there they were. WOOHOO! I had two, very old and no longer in use databases that had exceeded 6 gigs in size! They were backing up like clockwork every night even though they were no longer in use!

If you want to know where your space has gone too, go look at the files that are burning it up. Simple, to the point, to heck with all this other crap. Once you see what they are, you can easily solve the problem.

Big Bill aka "Skyforum"
Come check out my site at www.towtalk.net :D:D:D

[Jason Dunn]

Go to search / advanced options / select "files larger than 1 meg" leave all the other boxes blank and hit the start button.

I appreciate the advice, but that's not the problem in my case - I have a good handle on how big my user data is, and where it is. It's the Windows Vista system restore/shadow copy that's giving me a headache.