disk space

[chrisempson]

Compaq presario cq71 notbookPC:

Concerns hard disk "C" size 220 GB

I have run a diskcheck (on startup), a disk analysis and a defragmentation.

when I check the properties of the disk the system indcates 195 GB USED SPACE

but when I add together the size of all the Folders on the disk i get abaout 60GB used space.

 I have t downloaded and run the programme "step tree" and this also shows a used space of 60GB

can anybody tell me whether the rest of my disk i filled with "hidden" files or is there another problem.

also how can i get the space back?

thanks

[erico]

---

@chrisempson wrote:

Compaq presario cq71 notbookPC:

Concerns hard disk "C" size 220 GB

I have run a diskcheck (on startup), a disk analysis and a defragmentation.

when I check the properties of the disk the system indcates 195 GB USED SPACE

but when I add together the size of all the Folders on the disk i get abaout 60GB used space.

 I have t downloaded and run the programme "step tree" and this also shows a used space of 60GB

can anybody tell me whether the rest of my disk i filled with "hidden" files or is there another problem.

also how can i get the space back?

thanks

---

195 GB of 220 GB is a full hard disk. Never fill a hard disk to within 10-15% of its advertized RAW capacity unless you don't mind having the unexpected happening.

 I recommend that you copy a great deal of the data that you have on your laptop to an external drive.

If you do not do this rather quickly, shortly your notebook will not boot into Windows. 

The hidden files on are the recovery partition and may take up >+ 7GB. In the case of my loaner HP Envy17-3002ea, the recovery partition is 20 GB.

[chrisempson]

Hello Erico,

 perhaps I havn't explained my problem properly. I cannot join screenshots so i will have

to try and explain exactly what i have as a problem.

disk C has 15 Folders 

Chris

Find_MOZ_EXT

Fun

HP

MSOCache

Perflogs

pics to check

Program files

Program files (x86)

Programdata

searchplugins

SwSetup

SySTEM-SAV

Users

Windows

 If I mark the folder and right click the mouse I can then choose "properties" from the list and ther I see 

the size of the folder, the size on disk and the contents with the number of files and the number of folders.

if I do that for each folder and add  the total sizes I get about 44Gb.

If I go up to Disk C and check the properties then I get a total of 195 GB.

So back to my question what is it that is filling up my disk?

if I knew what the files where then of course i would delete of save them, but I don't even know how to find them-

(As i wrote in my mail i also ran the steo tree program and he finds about 50Gb on disk c)

I do hope that my problem is now clear to you. If you need more infomation please ask.

many thanks

Chris

[erico]

Actually I do not believe that you understand. I think that you have fallen into the common misconception about hard disk advertized storage capacity. Don't feel bad as you are not alone. Many people don't understand how it works. Here is a detailed tutorial on the subject.

If you purchase a hard disk that is advertized as having the capacity of 220 GB, that is essentially raw capacity or advertized storage capacity. When you format the hard disk and create a recovery partition there is considerably less available to use as some capacity has become overhead. I would say there is at least ten percent less than the advertized capacity.

That would put the available capacity at 220 GB - 22GB (overhead used in formatting) -@8GB (used as the 😧 recovery partition) = 190 gb.  

I have a pair of 2.0 TB hard disks in RAID 1 configuration in my Synology 209j NAS. I do not have 4.0 TB of storage space. I have 1.8 TB of available space to use as storage. I could have used RAID 0 to achieve an actual @3.6  TB of storage capacity but I chose RAID 1 to allow for redundancy of my data.

|You may respond to this, but I do hope that now you understand how it works. It was a mater of understanding the concepts involved. We are here to help each other and that is the sole intent of my post. 

[chrisempson]

Hello Erico,

 thanks for your interesting  information about disk size. I do fully appreciate the importance of freeing up space on the local disk especially as it contains the opperating system. If i can find what is filling up the space on the disk perhaps I can remove it .

so it is important thayou understand my question, this mail is long because i have made screen shots to show the problem, pleae bear with it and read on.

if I do "properties" of my computer you see that I have a local disk C 218Gb, a local disk D (recovery) 14,2GB

and an external disk F 100GB as archive or storage space.

you can also see that the 7 folders on C are all folders containing windows or program files.

if i now ask for "properties of disk c i now see that of the 218GB available 194GB are used.

If I now go to each of the 7 folders and do "properties" i get the following 7 snapshots with the size of each

folder. and if you add them up you only get a total of 36GB, so what is filling up the rest of the 194 GB?

thanks again for your help

Chris

[erico]

Have you cleared the recycle bin or the temp folder lately?

That may account for some of the missing space.

I will ask a Mod to review the images  you posted so that I can view them.

I have a few things to do right now so I will revisit your thread in an hour or so.  🙂

[chrisempson]

Hi again,

 i have already run a disk cleanup and  a disk defragmentation last week before contacting HP

however I have just rerun the disk cleanup and it has freed up 8 GB, but the basic problem is still there

chris

[erico]

The following image got my attention.

Unfortunately, and perhaps especially in your case, choosing compression was not a great plan.

Whatever you do, Don't untick it yet! If you do, your operating system may crash.

You may also have too many restore points taking up many GB. Delete all but the last one and copy it to an external disk. 

I suggest that you begin deleting or moving many files, specifically images and perhaps even iso images to an external disk. Choose a disk  with plenty of space. 

After you have done that delete them from your disk and then make sure that you empty the recycle bin again.

I have not seen an answer from you on my question about the recycle bin and the temp folders.  

Have you taken care of those issues yet?

Do you know how to clean out the temp folder?

Don't feel bad if you don't as many people wouldn't have an idea on how it is done. 

[chrisempson]

Hello Erico,

 I did reply to your previous mail, as I said that before i asked for help i have already run a disk analysis, disk defragmentation and disk cleanup (which also empties the recycle bin if you ok it), howevern  i did another disk cleanup and and this has brought the used space down to 186GB.

Concerning your idea of deleting or moving files, as you can see from my previos snapshot of disk C, it seems to me that the only folders left are those containing files needed to to run programs, users and windows, anyway the space they take up is only 35 GB.

you also wrote "You may also have too many restore points taking up many GB. Delete all but the last one and copy it to an external disk. "

what are restore points? how and where would i find them?

best regards

chris

[erico]

Restore points are located in a hidden folder called System Volume Information. In order to view them you will have to unhide hidden system files.

To delete all but the most recent restore point, return to disk cleanup , select disk cleanup for the C: drive and in the window that opens afterwards select the more options tab.