Very large unknown files

[Rekusu]

What ho one and all,

Should be preparing for Santa's arrival, but I am posting this question instead!

Running XP sp3 (still); every few months, I clean the HDD with a few utilities, scan for any virus / malware etc and defrag C: which is a 100gb partition. Generally, around 50 gb is in use; the largest files are a VM, AutoCAD and probably Photoshop.

After a recent defrag, I was amazed that I only had 25% free. Using Space sniffer, I found six, recently created (last few months) files ranging in size form 500kb to 6gb. Typical file name was A2F66F1B127C0036C4539DB3AF7E20D1F0548574 with no extension.

I have deleted them, back to around 45% free space and no adverse affect.

What could these be? How and why were they created?

Grateful for any suggestions.

Rex

[jdc2000]

What folder were those files in?

[Rekusu]

I have now deleted them all and not having any issues, so can only assume that they are rubbish files.

But to answer your question, they were in the C: directory, along with all the other XP os files.

If they return, I will copy the actual file name; I only got the name again for this thread by using an 'undelete' program.

[fink]

One way to test what happens before you delete a file or folder in the future is to add .old as a temporary extension. That will render it effectively invisible to anything on the computer to see if deleting it would have any effect.

[Rekusu]

You are right and I should have done that. But since they were all dated in the last four months and certainly prior to that, there had been no issues, I took the executive decision to delete.

Regained all the space and no issues arising.

Happy new year

Rex

[fink]

And a happy new year to you too!