Teeming Millions, what are some reasons that my hard drive would be claiming to be full, when I don’t see how it could be? It’s an eight month old laptop, and I don’t download movies or other large files. It’s claiming to have 21.4 (5 minutes ago, before opening Firefox), and now 18 gig free of 682 gig total.
Yesterday I ran CHKDISK, which took 19 hours.
Malwarebytes says I’m fine, Kapersky anti virus says I’m fine, and Spybot search and destroy also finds nothing wrong.
Could CC Cleaner, which I’ve run, have filled up my hard drive with random binary patterns?
How can I convince my hard drive that it’s not full? And if it is actually full, how can I free up space?
Thanks!
Malfunctioning software can create files that eat up space. I’ve never heard of CCleaner doing that. Run a program that graphs your hard drive usage to spot data hogs: WinDirStat
Crap Cleaner WILL fill up your drive if you use the secure erase option, then don’t let it finish. It creates a humunguous file, so look for the biggest file on the drive and delete it. It will have a very weird name that doesn’t sound geeky, FWIW. Do not attempt if you’re not using secure erase.
Defrag the drive for good measure afterwards.
It’s that humongous porn folder that’s taking up the space! 
Many programs make temporary files that are never deleted. Other programs delete their temporary files, but only if the program exits as planned. If you computer hangs for any reason and is force-rebooted, these become orphaned files and are never deleted. Sometimes these files can be very large and very many. Sometimes the files are flagged as hidden, which makes them harder to find and invisible to default searches.
Besides doing the analysis Fear Itself suggested, try searching for all files that end in *.tmp (and include hidden files). If all active programs are closed, most of these can be deleted safely. You may surprised as to how many there are.
Once you are sure the deleted files aren’t necessary (reboot and test a few programs), be sure to clean out the recycling bin, or the space used won’t be released. A chkdsk and defrag afterwards wouldn’t hurt, either.
An app like Folder Size will help, it will list where the largest folders are and then you can figure out what caused it.
I really like DiskScanner for instantly showing where all my disk space is going.
Possibly you have windows backups turned on - that makes a file that shows a 0 size, but will actually take up many GB on disk.
Thank you, everyone for the replies. I have downloaded all the above referenced programs, and will run them all.
I am partial to the incomplete CC Cleaner response, because I used to run Cyberscrub, and there was always an “ignore low disk space warning” messege that would appear. There is a strange folder (strangely named) on my hard drive, and I think I’m going to kill it.
Before I do, would it be adviseable for me to run the CC Cleaner, making sure to allow it to finish, before deleting the suspicious folder? (there is a padlock icon on that folder.)
Anyway, thanks again, and if you don’t hear back from me shortly, that means I fucked up my computer!
Cheers!
Folder Size reported that Google Earth was using/occupying…500 thousand meg.
I’m not so proficient at metric, or multiplying, but that sounds like an unbelievable amount of space. 'Scuse me while I uninstall Google Earth. ( Hasn’t updated the picture of my house in years, anyway. )
I’ll check back in periodically every time I don’t fuck my computer up.
Cheers, make this one a double.
That Google Earth space is undoubtedly supposed to be temporary-- you might have something running on your computer that’s preventing it from emptying the temp folder (which is supposed to happen automatically from time-to-time. I believe it’s a Scheduled Task in Windows 7.)
BTW one thing nobody recommended (that I can see…) is the “Disk Cleanup” tool built into Windows. I’d trust the tool from Microsoft a lot more than I trust something like CCleaner. Try that, and see how much space it says can be deleted.
Then check back in a month to see if your temp space is bloating up again.
That’s 500G.
Sometimes, hackers store files on compromised systems (and hide them so they’re not obvious). Probably not likely here, but do a scan with Malwarebytes just to make sure there are no funny processes running.
Google Maps/Earth did the same to me a couple of months ago, filled a temp folder with stored imagery that didn’t clear afterwards, but it was only for one session. Before and after it’s been fine, so it was just a one-off glitch. Now I try to stay alert each time I use Google Maps.
All of the above will help in some way.
You could also delete all the “System Restore” points and reduce the number of future restore points.
In “Windows” Click - Computer - right click - Drive “C” - Properties - " Disk Cleanup"
After a while a window will appear showing what can be deleted. Check the “More Options” tab and click the “remove all but the most recent restore point”
That should free up some Gb’s.
Anti virus software quarantining temporary files was what caused this problem on my office desktop.
Defragging will NOT give you more disk space.
When you write to a disk it does not all go in one place on the disk. The file gets chopped up into pieces and is placed where ever there is an empty space.
When you come to look at the file the spinning platters and moving heads find all the bits of the file and put it together to display on your monitor.
All this searching for the bits of files only takes microseconds so you don’t notice but if you have a large drive with lots of “fragmented” files it does take longer.
Defragmenting your drive moves all the bits of files together in one clump so when you call up that file moving heads do not go dashing all over the drive looking for the bits because the file is altogether in one place so your computer is a little faster.
how are your partitions set up?
Treesize Pro is your friend.
Thanks for that, I’ll give it a try. Cheers!
ahh, well, you know…my partitions are set up like they were when I took the laptop out of the box.
Thanks! Whenever my computer is finished with the de-frag, I’ll check into that.
I’ll let everyone know immediately before I delete anything, and as is my way here -ha ha- if you don’t here from me after that, then I fucked up my computer!
