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a good clean up

686 views 16 replies 8 participants last post by  Mr. Original 
#1 ·
where would you have to look to find what's taking up so much space on your hard drive? I have 1tb of memory and it already uses about eighty to eighty five gb's just for the system itself to run. have been in and out of everywhere on the pc and can't find what's taking all the space. I noticed the other day I installed and uninstalled a game like five times and each time it never took it off the memory. maybe there's some hard drive cleaner out there I don't know about. do you?
 
#3 ·
Awesome free software.

I always keep a copy on my flash drive for helping friends. Easy to use, navigate to larger files and great visual display of what's being used.

http://windirstat.info/

windirstat-medium.jpg
 
#4 ·
hey thanks guys. I'm going to try both of them. as for going to the add/remove programs menu I usually go through it all the time. right now I have very little there since I just re-installed my windows 7. somebody told me that you can have a virus taking up a lot of space on a hd and you wouldn't even know you had the virus. is that true?
 
#5 ·
I'd guess it's a possibility.

Run windirstat and you'll immediately see what's taking up the space. If it looks suspicious then google te filename.
 
#6 ·
Quote:


Originally Posted by onmiway75
View Post

hey thanks guys. I'm going to try both of them. as for going to the add/remove programs menu I usually go through it all the time. right now I have very little there since I just re-installed my windows 7. somebody told me that you can have a virus taking up a lot of space on a hd and you wouldn't even know you had the virus. is that true?

This is true, but I think you would notice, just to be sure you could always download the free version of Malware bytes.
 
#7 ·
#8 ·
Quote:


Originally Posted by onmiway75
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I have 1tb of memory disk space


Quote:


each time it never took it off the memory freed the disk space

Fixed.

For starters, do a chkdsk /r of your C: drive (chkdsk C: /r in an elevated command prompt).

Second, you can Windowskey+F in order to find files. Put *.* in the box, hit enter and go make a sandwich. When you come back, sort by file size. This will give you a list from largest to smallest of all the files on your PC.

Last, malware scans/cleanup.

Quote:


It takes 80-85 GB just to run

Doubtful, right click the Windows folder and hit properties, will likely be 15-18 GB.
 
#9 ·
Quote:


Originally Posted by onmiway75
View Post

hey thanks guys. I'm going to try both of them. as for going to the add/remove programs menu I usually go through it all the time. right now I have very little there since I just re-installed my windows 7. somebody told me that you can have a virus taking up a lot of space on a hd and you wouldn't even know you had the virus. is that true?

Thats incredibly unlikely but hey, anythings possible. Viruses usualy tend to be small and route themselves in other programs or in complex places as to avoid detection. A virus that big wouldnt avoid detection, and if it was meant to take up HDD space it would probably not let you know it was doing it.

Is 915gigs free? Beacuse 1Tb doesn't ever actually have 1000gigs of usuable space, more like 960gigs. Windows 7 is also unloading a page file on your HDD (virtual Ram) and creating periodic BACKUPS! these backups take a good chunk of space and arnt easy to find. Empty your recycle bin.
 
#10 ·
thanks for all the replies everybody. not sure where all my disk space is disappearing to. when you click on my computer, it says I have 878 of 919gb's free. so yes, 81 of my gb is being used on something just for the pc to run. I only have a few programs installed so I don't think I'm using 41 gb's of disk space. I tried using Windirstat and it shows I have 14 gb's in files and 13.4 gb's used in windows if I'm reading it correctly. there is not much more than that except a few gb's for program files, users and sources.

also, where do I find the hdd backups?
 
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by onmiway75;12586730
thanks for all the replies everybody. not sure where all my disk space is disappearing to. when you click on my computer, it says I have 878 of 919gb's free. so yes, 81 of my gb is being used on something just for the pc to run. I only have a few programs installed so I don't think I'm using 41 gb's of disk space. I tried using Windirstat and it shows I have 14 gb's in files and 13.4 gb's used in windows if I'm reading it correctly. there is not much more than that except a few gb's for program files, users and sources.

also, where do I find the hdd backups?
aahh i see ur using 42gb of space which i assum is the window's 7 which is fine, im guessing because it says 919mb tht 80g has been partitioned off, have a llook in computer management (search for it in the search bar when u press the windows key) double click storage and double click diskmanangement and see what it says on there on mine it says 300gb of windows files, 400mb of free space
 
#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by onmiway75;12586730
thanks for all the replies everybody. not sure where all my disk space is disappearing to. when you click on my computer, it says I have 878 of 919gb's free. so yes, 81 of my gb is being used on something just for the pc to run. I only have a few programs installed so I don't think I'm using 41 gb's of disk space. I tried using Windirstat and it shows I have 14 gb's in files and 13.4 gb's used in windows if I'm reading it correctly. there is not much more than that except a few gb's for program files, users and sources.

also, where do I find the hdd backups?
There isn't 81Gb being used for "Windows to run on"... it doesn't exist! When you buy a 1Tb drive, you don't get 1Tb of space.

Because of the way computers format hard drive, you will never see a drive format to the full space.

This occurs because the way computers address memory is based on the binary system. In the binary measuring system, one GB does not equal 1000 MB. Instead, one GB equals 1024 MB (since 1024 is binary 2 raised to the 10th power).

However, hard drive manufacturers measure drives in decimal numbers. For a hard drive, one GB does equal 1000 MB.

So, when you format a drive, you actually lose 24 MB per GB formatted simply becuase the computer is formatting in binary a drive that was sold measured in decimal. There has actually been a long-standing feud in the computer world to get hard drive manufacturers to start selling drives based on binary measures so when you buy a 1 TB drive, you'll get a 1 TB drive. Back when drives were small, the amount of space lost was negligible. But now with TB drives common, the amount of space lost, as you are seeing, is quite large.

Add to the above facts that a certain amount of space is needed for the drive partition tables and, of course, Windows itself you will generally see the amount of space you have after a clean format and install.
 
#13 ·
thanks MAKECOLDPLAYHISTORY! I understand what your saying. usually when I restore my pc my hd opens up to around 900gb's. when I re-installed windows yesterday it stayed at 865gb's. not only that but it erased all my pre-loaded best buy programs. when I go into add/remove programs everything is empty now except for my graphics card and the few programs I've installed. although I did delete my old windows file and freed up some memory that I'm around 878 now.
 
#14 ·
No problem
smile.gif


Sounds about right.

Here's mine. I have a couple of games installed Adobe CS5 Suite, Office and a few other bits of software.

Capture-18.jpg


These numbers should be similar for you too

Capture-19.jpg
 
#16 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by onmiway75;12588215
I guess I should stop worry about my disk space since I still have a ton more, right?
Yes, but it's a good idea to keep an eye on it anyway... just don't fret.

Space soon gets swallowed up - films, music, games... 1Tb can go before you know it
smile.gif
 
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