HDD Rapidly filling up - With what?

[parabellum]

Using Windows 7Pro in a Dell Inspiron One, (monitor and inner workings all in one).


Happened to look at my C drive and noticed the indicator had gone from colour blue to red and it shows the C drive, 270GB, to be almost full, about 13GB spare, this has happened over the last month when I did a format and rebuild. I went through the files on the C drive, Windows is the biggest at about 23GB, Users at 15GB and Programme Files at 7GB, everything else is much smaller and I estimate I have used about 50GB. Am showing Hidden files, nothing obvious there. Would appreciate thoughts on what has happened and how to get out of it please.

[Loose rivets]

What did you do to carry out the Format?

[BOAC]

Run checkdisk first.

[cdtaylor_nats]

Check the system recovery in the Control Panel. If its auto-updating then it will be creating restore files.

[parabellum]

Thanks everyone. It was system restore that was filling up the disk, I thought 'Restore' data was going to a different partition, but it wasn't! Thanks again.

[MartinCh]

writing lots of small files isn't efficient either as well as considerable fragmentation.

[Mike-Bracknell]

I find this a useful tool: TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs (http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/)

[jimtherev]

Thanks, Mike. Must admit not searching too hard, but I've occasionally said to meself 'if only I still had Xtree'; 'twas tres useful. (how many years ago was that, frevens sake?)


loved the opening statement on their home page:
Every hard disk is too small if you just wait long enough how true...

[Mike-Bracknell]

Thanks, Mike. Must admit not searching too hard, but I've occasionally said to meself 'if only I still had Xtree'; 'twas tres useful. (how many years ago was that, frevens sake?)


I had a copy of XTREE in 1986 so we're going back a fair way. XTREE Pro was great, XTREE Gold was pants.

[mixture]

I find this a useful tool: TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs

Yep, I can vouch for that tool.

Although these days, if you're so inclined, you can probably replicate what it does just using PowerShell.

[vulcanised]

Fond memories of Xtree here too.

I use PowerDesk instead of Explorer. Occasionaly it reminds me I've used it Xthousand times (v5).

[mixture]

Fond memories of Xtree here too.


Bunch of boring old farts you lot. :E

[Biggles78]

Assuming you are running Win 7 SP1.
Click the Orb (Start button)
type cleanmgr.exe
Right click Run as administrator
Select C: Drive, OK
Scroll down (after the scan) and put a tick in the Service Pack Backup Files
Select any of the other options you may find that have lots of unwanted files.
The Service Pack Backup Files trims down the C: \Windows\winsxs folder that store the Windows Update Files. It also maintains a copy of any replaced Updated files that are no longer required by the operating system.

If you are not running Service Pack 1, then Google clean out winsxs windows 7 and then enjoy some interesting reading.

Anyway, it's worth a look.

[finncapt]

Thanks for that - it only gave 1.14Gb but interesting - have done it with XP, before, but these sort of things are comparatively hidden in Win7.

[jimtherev]

Bunch of boring old farts you lot. :E
how dare you call me boring!

[Ancient Observer]

Biggles,
go to the top of the class.
Exemplary description.

I'd forgotten all about disc clean up as I use CClean and Jet clean. However, disc clean found 5gb of m/s 's own crap from updates.

[CISTRS]

Me too....

Thanks Biggles