Hard Drive Growing

[alisonb]

I've run the Disk Cleanup program as administrator twice now, and the numbers aren't adding up for me. Below I will list the C:\ available space before running Disc Cleanup, the size of space Disc Cleanup claimed it would be freeing for me, and then the actual resulting free space (per windows explorer).

First run
available space before run:11.9GB
Disc Cleanup claims will free: 7.25GB
Resulting free space after run: 11.7GB

Second run
available space before run:11.7GB
Disc Cleanup claims will free: 23.9GB
Resulting free space after run: 23.3GB

Shouldn't these numbers be additive? I especially can't understand how it could have been freeing 7GB but end up with less space than at the start. Is there any sort of log for the program/process that I can/should check?

[alisonb]

Yes, this computer used to have... Vista, I think it was. I now have Windows 7. To be honest, it's been long enough that I don't recall the details of the installation.

I checked Windows Update Cleanup on the second round with Disc Cleanup.

Yes, most of the space is under documents, pictures and music. Those are some of the places I'm keeping an eye on as I run windirstat at different times. I culled through the downloads folder about a week ago and discarded many files. Some files I still have use for have remained.

Ah, so this was an upgrade install over XP or Vista? If you don't plan on ever reverting to your old OS, I'd just go ahead and remove those files. Normally, I would do a clean install rather than an upgrade.
Did you also check Windows Update Cleanup?

If you want to do a full disk scan in MBAM, you could choose Custom and select the drives you want to scan. The Threat scan is usually enough. MBAM is not the only antimalware tool out there. Like I mentioned, if you want a more thorough diag, make a post in the ICU forum following the instructions I posted earlier.

You should look further into the Users folder and see which folders are taking up space there. I'm guessing you have a lot of data files in C:\Users\<username>\Documents. That should account for the majority of the space used. You should also check the Downloads folder and see if you can get rid of anything.

[Midknyte]

There is no log for Disk Cleanup. If anything, there would be an entry for cleanmgr.exe in the Event Viewer logs.
Note that it is just an estimate. There may be locked/protected files that it cannot delete, even for Administrators.

[alisonb]

I understand that, and didn't expect numbers to match exactly. But how could I have 0.2GB less space available after the process than I did going into it? Even if nothing was deleted, shouldn't I have the same as when I started?

[alisonb]

Here's another good example of the problem I am seeing. Yesterday I reported that I had 23.3GB free. Other than posting here, I didn't do anything on the computer after that. It just sat here closed. Yet this morning windows explorer says I have only 20.8GB free. Where did 2.5GB go????

Can windows explorer not accurately count how much space I have? Should I not be taking this number seriously? But if that were the case, why is it always changing in the smaller direction, and never the other way?

[Train]

There are nasties that write themselves to the hdd and fill it with garbage.
My first experience with them was in Aug 2000, so they have been around a long time.
Check the size of the hibernate file
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...-sys-file.html
seen them get out of hand !

I think it is time to get Broni's help so follow all the instructions at
http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...d-3-21-2015%29

[Midknyte]

Like I mentioned in posts #6 and #13, you should get your system checked out at the ICU.