What could be eating up so much hard drive space?

Are you on a mac? or a PC?

handy free tools tell you where all your space has gone

TreeSizeFree for the PC: http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml
DiscInventoryX for the Mac: http://www.derlien.com/

Windows takes about 20 GB i think , I use Tuneup utilities to free up space/ see whats on the drive It also does alot more than that

It is a PC running XP. The funny thing is, we have comperable programs/files on our computers (and the same size hard drive), and I am doing just fine.

Does she have a lot of iTunes? How about PICTURES?

@Quagmire – Nope, we got rid of all that.

I added a 500GB Western Digital MyBook external hard drive to my computer, and after removing everything I could think of, my original HD is still about 45% full. I may need to move a few more things.

Have you moved any programs not used regularly, everything in the MyDocuments folder with just the shortcut on the desktop, and more importantly games and wmvs and mp3s? My 500GB external is seen by the system as a part of the computer, and usually getting the OS to find moved programs isn’t that difficult.

I use this and think it’s neat:

http://download.cnet.com/Disk-Space-Finder/3000-2094_4-10859229.html

@Quagmire thanks for that link, I’m going to give that a try.

@evelyns_pet_zebra – Yeah, she has moved lots of things over to her external drive. She doesn’t really have much in the way of unused programs. at least not that I know of.

@Quagmire – I’ll have to try that. I’ll let ya’ll know what that turns up.

Let me know how the program works out for anyone who uses it.

windirstat is also a good freeware program for a graphical usage of a hard drive.

@patg7590: Thank you! I’ve been looking for a tool like that!

@gernreich. gonna try that as we speak.

So we ran spacemonger and while it didn’t actually finish the entire hard drive, for reasons unknown to us, it seems the largest file, at 11 GB was backup.bkf.

What’s the deal?

One thing I found was eating up space and I don’t think anyone mentioned yet, was cookies and other temporary documents. Go to “disk cleanup” and it will tell you what is taking up space and what you could get rid of.

@Les Sounds like a backup file of her docs folder maybe from a long time ago, or maybe data retained from a program like CS3 or CS4. Are any of those installed?

@dverhey – Yeah, we think it is a backup file, too. I’d like to delete it because I think it is rather extraneous; she has everything vital backed up onto a hard drive, and if anything major ever happened, we could easily just re install windows (like I said, there really are not that many programs on here. ;-)
CS3 and CS4 are not here.

@Jack79 – Yep, did that. Thanks.

Why can’t the backup.bkf file be deleted?

Also do your defrag every month. That rearranges your files to make your computer run better, too.

Download SpaceMonger. This is used in the IT industry all the time and it gives you an excellent visualization of what’s taking up space. http://www.sixty-five.cc/download/

Upload the image to imageshack or something and i’ll tell you exactly whats taking up that much space.

@NerdRageIT – We did. It ran for a while, that’s how we found the backup.bkf file. But it doesn’t complete the run. It stops when there is still about 47% of the disk left to be scanned.

BTW, we deleted the backup file. Big deal.

You might check the backup settings. I had the same problem with Vista where the default backup location was on the main hard drive and after 2 or 3 backups my disk was full. I changed it to an external drive and I can’t remember if I had to delete the files or not. Depending on how the backup works there might be incremental backup files that are smaller than the 11GB that are eating up the rest of your space.

If you are manually copying files from the main hard drive to an external drive, do you remember to DELETE the files from the main drive after you are SURE they copied successfully?

Perhaps there’s something funky going on with your HD? A bad sector that’s causing the OS to remap around it? though, that doesn’t really sound right…

@Quagmire – Yes.

@andrew – It could be. I really don’t think it has anything to do with her having too many programs or files anymore. I just spent the last two hours messing around, and I tell ya, she has less on there than I have. I think there is something wrong with her HD, but I don’t know what. I may just scrub the disk and reinstall the essentials to see if we get the same problem.

I want to get this taken care of before August 16, when we leave for the ice. That’s the last place I’d want her computer to fail.

Can anyone recommend a good PC disk repair/checking program? Doesn’t XP have one?

@andrew chkdsk -f (open cmd and run) or spinrite6 (bootable tool)

@patg7590 – I’m going to run off for a quick lunch, but I’ll give that chkdsk a try when I get back. Thanks!

are you emptying the recycling bin…

@Ivan – Yeeeees.

We are trying the chkdsk right now. It is taking a while. Still nothing huge has happened, though.

have you tried the TEMP folder? Problem with XP is it fills up pretty fast and the files aren’t always erased.

You should find it in c:\Documents and settings\Administrator or All Users or a username you defined as your main account\Local Settings\Temp.

If you don’t regularly empty the cache of your internet browser(s) do it, and limit the max cache size in the browser’s settings. It can fill up real fast as well.

Do you play a lot of 3D games? Saved games can take up a lot of space. I’ve accumulated over 1.5GB with just Fallout 3. You can find them in c:\documents and settings\main account name\My documents, some of them in the My Games folder. They can also be in Application Data folders in the Administrator or All Users folders. Look for them manually.

System restore can take up a bit of space as well. If you often setup restore points you might want to check the total size allocated by windows in System (configuration panel) -> System restore tab—> settings.

@Jack_Haas – Thanks for the ideas. Unfortunately, no she didn’t clean out her temp files, but we did today. That wasn’t it. She plays no games and I reduced her system restore allocation today, but that was a drop in the bucket. Thanks for the ideas, though.

The chkdsk did nothing. I think it did find some corrupted files, and repaired them, but nothing huge. This is a stumper for me. :-/

dont all these suggested apps show you EXACTLY what each MB is being occupied by?

It could be a registry error. Have you scanned it?

Your alternative is to make sure your important stuff is backed up, then re-install your operating system (which will wipe out everything as you know).

Run this:
http://www.ccleaner.com/download

Also, that backup.bkf is made by Windows Backup. Boot into something such as DSL:
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/download.html

Then delete it from there. Or use any linux live CD or bootable windows CD.

Another thing. On NTFS file systems defragging does next to nothing to speed up performance, so I wouldn’t bother doing it every month as some random guy recommended!

Cheers
Blam

@patg7590 – Yeah, they should. However, the problem we were having was those apps wouldn’t even finish the scan. They would only finish about 30% of her hard drvie. That makes me think it is something other than some huge file or program somewhere.

@Jack_Haas – You know, I don’t think so. Thanks, we’ll do that straight away.

@Quagmire – Yeah, I know. I’m prepared to do that, I just wanted to exhaust all other possibilities before we dive into that.

@AskBlam – I don’t know that the ccleaner would do all that much. Honestly, there is nothing left on her computer. We can try it, but I don’t think it will make much of a difference. Also, the backup.bkf is gone. I got rid of it. So now she has a whole 30% of her disc free. Getting somewhere, but not quite there yet.

@All – Thanks for the tips and suggestions. I appreciate everything.

@Les Did you try running one overnight?

@andrew – No, but we let one go yesterday for a few hours, and it still got stuck at 30% complete.

sounds like my computer!
i guess nearly 30gb of music isn’t good for it, but jeez, it’s not that much