[RESOLVED] Losing C: drive space daily - W7-x64

Hello all,

I've attempted all I can think of in my experience to free up some disk space, but alas am left stupified by this issue.

Every day, more and more of my C: drive is being eaten up by some program and it is driving me nuts.

I have a 25Gb partition dedicated to just the OS, which is my C: drive. There are NO programs installed on this partition, just IE. I have all apps installed on another partition and I have also relocated the My Documents folder to another partition.

I've gone through the usual steps of trying to pinpoint the problem (system restore files, temp files, temp internet files, etc etc). Even peering into AppData and ProgramData, there isn't more than a gig or two being taken up there. But some how, I keep losing space.

I noticed that W7, by default, sets your sleep pattern to Hybrid sleep. I did not know this at first, so I promptly disabled that. I usually put my computer to sleep, so perhaps copying the RAM to the HDD in hybrid mode was slowly eating up the space, but I will see.

But honestly I am just frustrated now. Have NO idea what program is eating the space up...I've ruled out the possibility of a virus. It is SOME sort of temp files or even perhaps the pagefile (which is taking up 4Gb). But I am hesitant to touch the pagefile...never needed to do that in the past.

Any suggestions my friends? At the end of my wits here...:confused:

Have you checked your recycle bin?

Possible help.
http://www.computerforum.com/164120-...otal-size.html

Adjust size.
http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-7...cle-bins-size/

Thanks for the links train! :)

My recylce bin is set to 2Gb max size for the C: drive. It is empty now, but do you mean to say that 2Gb will always be "reserved" for the bin, even if it is empty?

Also, does anyone happen to know the default installation size for W7 x64 Pro? If I remember correctly it was perhaps 17Gb?

The recycle bin would not be taking up 2GB if it was empty. System restore space may be taking up some of it. Do you have any backup software configured? If not, how did you eliminate malware as a cause. There are rootkits which are undetectable by normal means that can cause this very problem.

Hi Jdc,

Yeah I thought it may have been system restore, but my allocation is set to 320Mb...not that much in the scheme of things considering I've lost a good chunk of gigabytes here.

I ruled out malware as this problem has existed ever since switching to windows 7. What I mean by this is that I installed W7-x86 in January. On that fresh install, the drive space was slowly creeping as well, with minimal programs installed on all partitions and clean scans coming through on virus scanners.

Updated to x64 about a month ago and the same behavior started occuring shortly after installation. Again, barely any programs installed and clean scans coming through.

I would consider myself a fairly savvy computer user who can detect malware when it pokes its head out, but I admit that I am no expert either. I've ruled out malware/virus based on my previous experiences with such things, but that can still be a possibility...What would you suggest I should do to firmly rule this out?

Please, read here: http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...d.php?t=167915, and start new topic here: http://discussions.virtualdr.com/forumdisplay.php?f=71

Thanks again for the links, Train.

I had run Panda/AVG/Malware before posting, but I ran some additional online scans from that list and still come up clean. Followed standard procedure for scanning (safe mode w/ networking etc). Hadn't tried GMER before, but that too did not come up with anything. The only things that came up were false positives that were W7-x64 sys files that are known and clean (hijack.display and syswow 64)

So I'm still lead to think that it is not a virus or malware of sorts...

I am just confused now. Where is the leak!!! :confused:

The good news is since disabling hybrid sleep, my comp does not lose HDD space when sent to standby! So that is the main culprit I suspect...but I am missing about 5Gb of data somewhere...

Run TFC to toss all temp files in all temp folders. And CCleaner, tossing all your caches + junk.

There are also programs that show a pie chart of your drive.

Thanks for the suggestions foxy.

I had already run CCleaner which freed up about 700MB, but haven't given TFC a run before. I will do that now! :)

Thanks again for the TFC suggestion foxy, I thought I had already dumped whatever was in my temp folders, but apparently TFC found some thing I didn't catch! Got me back a cool 500MB :cool:

Making good progress...hmm...maybe I should revisit that Appdata folder...

Disk Space Analyzers:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...space&gs_rfai=


http://www.techsupportalert.com/best...e-analyzer.htm

Thank you very much for the disk analyzers jdc!!!! :D

I used SpaceSniffer (AWESOME PROGRAM!) and it proved what I had suspected all along...hibernation files!

hibfil.sys was taking up close to 3Gb of space (a bit less than my physical amount of ram...).

Disabled hibernation via cmd using the "powercfg -h off" command and presto! I am back up to fresh install space! :)

Thank you all for the great suggestions and help! I think we can shut the book on this one.

A job well done all! :)

Above your first post is Thread Tools. In there, as you are the initial poster, you can mark the thread resolved.

Thanks for posting the fix.

Done and Done, Train! :)