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Windows Vista Thread, what is eating my free disk space? in Technical; A teacher accidently started to synchronise with our intranet. He got rid of everything he could find that had been ...
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    what is eating my free disk space?

    A teacher accidently started to synchronise with our intranet. He got rid of everything he could find that had been downloaded to his laptop, but the disk is showing under 10Gb free. He is sure there should be more. I added up all the space used by all files and directories (including the pagefile, hiberfil.sys and hidden recyclers) and there is definitely 30Gb unaccounted for. I am stumped! Any and all suggestions would be gratefully received.

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    mossj's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kath View Post
    Any and all suggestions would be gratefully received.
    Emptied the Recycle bin?

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  5. 2 Thanks to mattx:

    JPS (25th January 2011), kath (5th June 2009)

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    WinDirStat looks good for you, Lifehacker - Geek to Live: Visualize your hard drive usage - Disk recovery . There are some other alternatives available, but it will map up where the space has gone!

  7. Thanks to Jamo from:

    kath (5th June 2009)

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    Jamo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mattx View Post
    my typing be slow today! Not enough coffee..... lol

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  10. 2 Thanks to JJonas:

    JPS (25th January 2011), kath (5th June 2009)

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    Is it partitioned, particularly a recovery partition?

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    I had emptied the recycle bin! Just trying WinDirStat - I had used xytree.

    It is a partion, but C:\, not a recovery partition.

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    C:\ is your main boot partition leave that one alone
    Last edited by JJonas; 5th June 2009 at 02:15 PM.

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    Use the disk cleanup tool in Vista, it is probably the shadow copies of the system files for system restore. Select for all users when asked and then click on the "more options" tab and click the "System Restore and Shadow copies" clean up button.

    This will probably be the solution to the missing disk space.

  15. Thanks to SYNACK from:

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    Have you tried error checking the hard disk? It could be the disk space is being misreported.

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    kath (5th June 2009)

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    I had error checked it, and defragged.

    Also now run disk cleanup for disk restore and shadow copies.

    Now only missing 4GB which I think he will have to live with.

    Thanks to all.

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    Did you check C:\WINDOWS\CSC

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    kath (8th June 2009)

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    Try "Tree Size Free"

    Hi,

    Try "Tree Size Free" to see how much space each folder on your computer is using. I have used it before and is very good. Just point it to the C:\ drive and let it run. You will end up with a nice tree display of all your folders in size order.

    Another tip is using it on the root folder of your roaming profiles or redirected folders to see who is using the most storage. You can also flick the software over to display percentages that each folder is using (out of the total size of the root folder).

    Great software, and free!

    Ross

  22. Thanks to rosswilson from:

    kath (8th June 2009)

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    Quote Originally Posted by kath View Post
    Now only missing 4GB which I think he will have to live with.
    Remember that the stated size of a disk on spec is not the size that you end up with in Windows due to the 1000/1024 rule for megabytes/gigabytes.

    eg. a 120gb HD = 120000MB by the manufacturers rule of 1000MB = 1GB
    120000/1024 = 117.2GB (3GB 'missing')

  24. Thanks to OutToLunch from:

    kath (8th June 2009)

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