Windows 7 vanishing HDD space

[fjgold]

Hi folks,
Question here, First I have System Restore disabled so that can't be the source of the issue.
It seems that my drive space (the partition Win 7 is on) keeps getting smaller even though I haven't added any programs or large amounts of data. I'm not talking a great deal of space just 200 to 400 MB. I'm wondering, is there some kind of hidden activity that could be slowly using disc space, maybe some kind of logging activity or something?

This isn't a big issue, I'm just curious.

 

[moldavia]

sounds like your winsxs folder got bigger. This was happening to me until it took all my free space on my C partition I gave windows and windows locked up and crashed and would not boot again lol. its located in your Windows folder. Typically on install its about 4 gigs in size and can grow up to 10 gigs or more which apparently is not uncommon.

winsxs is the windows side by side folder which copies dll files from every program/software you install/run to ensure 100% complete compatability with each software. For example the reason for this is to prevent the "dll hell" that used to happen back when you installed 1 program and it put in check.dll and you installed another program that put in same dll file but a newer one. When you ran the older program it errored saying check.dll was not valid etc etc because of the version mismatch.

Even though you have not installed anything it doesnt matter this folder will get bigger. I thought that was strange myself but after installing everything it was a certain size then when I started running programs it started to get even bigger.

This may or may not be your problem directly but its a possibility. Another possibility is windows dynamically changed your swap file size based on need.

Moldavia

 

[reghakr]

Frank,

have you cleaned out your temp directories.

There is a program that works well in Windows 7 to remove those ":junk" files.

Download it here:
|MG| CCleaner Slim (No Toolbar) 2.20.920

Do not use the registry section, just use the Cleaner.

That's a start, there are many more options.

 

[fjgold]

Hi moldavia and reghakr,
Interesting developments here. Checked my winsxs folder as moldavia suggested. It's about 3.97 GB.
I have cleaned my temp files.
I have instructed Win 7 to use a user defined pagefile on my C: drive of 100MB min and 100MB max with a 1000MB min/max file on partition U:. I actually probably don't need any pagefile at all since I have 4 GB of DDR2 memory. This is my normal SOP however.
Anyway while checking the size of my C:\pagefile.sys file I discovered a huge hibernation file. I thought I had disabled hibernation but apparently not. Using the command line I disabled hibernation and removed this large file thereby gaining almost 2.5GB of drive space.

 

[reghakr]

Hello,

I personally would not mess with the C:\winsxs folder at all. Mine is at 9.64GB....yes, I have tons of apps installed.

unless you have a second hard drive, it really does no good to put your pagefile on another partition.

True, you don't need the hiberfil.sys file, but check Power Options in Control panel to make sure it is not set for hibernation otherwise the file will reappear.

It too bad explorer can't search for files by largest size. About the only thing you can do with Windows Explorer is navigate to each folder and choose Details View and then click the Size entry.

 

[fjgold]

Hello,

I personally would not mess with the C:\winsxs folder at all. Mine is at 9.64GB....yes, I have tons of apps installed.

unless you have a second hard drive, it really does no good to put your pagefile on another partition.

True, you don't need the hiberfil.sys file, but check Power Options in Control panel to make sure it is not set for hibernation otherwise the file will reappear.

It too bad explorer can't search for files by largest size. About the only thing you can do with Windows Explorer is navigate to each folder and choose Details View and then click the Size entry.

I don't plan on messing with the winsxs folder.
I know it doesn't do any good to put the pagefile on another partition of the same drive, but it don't hurt either.
The reason I do this is to spread files over my 2 NTFS partitions.
I have a large drive with Win 7 on a 22.5 GB NTFS partition, with no hibernation and a small pagefile my free space is 12.7 GB.
My other NTFS (17 GB) partition is used for the installation files of several large programs like Word, MS Streets and Trips and MS Picture it as well as Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird. Putting 1000 MB of pagefile there as well helps spread the load. Free space left is 8.57 GB.

I have a Fat32 partition that has a lot of saved data files as well as my 20 GB of MP3 files.
These MP3 files are playable from Win 7 as well as all my linux disros.

My Fat 32 partition is shared with all the OS's on my drive.

I did think I had disabled hibernation and before using the command line to disable and remove hiberfil.sys
Power Options showed no hibernation enabled?

Anyway after several boots no hiberfil.sys.

One thing Win 7 does poorly is not having a straitforward GUI approach to disabling hibernation like XP has.
You shouldnt have to resort to command line to disable.

 

[moldavia]

I never noticed the manual turn off for hibernation just went through and set it up without even realizing I never turned it off lol. thanks for mentioning that now I have it off useless program wasting 1.5 gigs of hard drive space. Well glad you got it figured out.

 

[reghakr]

Sorry, I didn't think about those advanced options either.

Good thinking!