# What is filling up my hard drive? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 6, 2009, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168 "2009-04-06T20:46:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Drain\_Bead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47774/32.png) [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2009, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/1 "2009-04-06T20:46:46Z")
I’ve had an Eee PC for a few months. It has what appears to be a partitioned hard drive (or two hard drives, a C: and a D:). For the past month or so, no matter what I do, the C: drive is always critically full. Earlier today I deleted about a gig’s worth of programs that it came with that I never use, and it was full again within an hour. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the main program I use (Firefox) to the D: drive, and selected that drive as the default location for downloading new stuff from Firefox, but that did not seem to help. I cannot for the life of me figure out why I can’t keep C: from filling up. There has to be something writing to it in the background, but I can’t figure out what and where. I’ve cleaned my cache and cookies and that doesn’t help. Last night we cleaned out about 400 megs of Windows Update files in my temp folder and it filled up before the night was over. Right now I’m googling the issue but haven’t found anything that applies to me. Any ideas? ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2009, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/2 "2009-04-06T20:56:38Z")
Be sure to set your Recycle Bin’s maximum size to something small enough that it can’t take over your free space (see how [here](http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=402)). You may also want to consider setting a maximum size on your swap file (See under “How to manually change the size of the virtual memory paging file” [here](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308417). This may affect performance, but not as badly as running out of free space. I’d also consider strongly installing CCleaner, which I find to be excellent at de-gunkifying. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_the\_Turtle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_the_turtle/32/2926_2.png) [@Fear\_the\_Turtle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_the_Turtle)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2009, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/3 "2009-04-06T20:59:28Z")
Did you try Asus’s message board (EEE PC is Asus, right?)? I had a lot of problems with one of their motherboards and got a lot of good info off the message board. I found their tech support very lacking, but the message board was a godsend. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2009, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/4 "2009-04-06T21:04:48Z")
Have you checked for viruses and spyware and come back clean? If you haven’t already, do a ctrl-alt-delete and look at what processes are running. ---
**Author:** ![HorseloverFat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@HorseloverFat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HorseloverFat)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2009, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/5 "2009-04-06T21:14:40Z")
A program like [tree view](http://www.treeview.net/tv/download.asp) will show you your hard drive arranged by file/folder size. How big is your drive? Is it one of those 4gig flash drives? If so, lots of people buy a 8 or 16 gig card and use that to install programs, etc. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2009, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/6 "2009-04-06T21:30:09Z")
> [@HorseloverFat](#): > > A program like [tree view](http://www.treeview.net/tv/download.asp) will show you your hard drive arranged by file/folder size. Forgot to mention the utility of that kind of … utility. I have a Linux machine I use as a backup server and it’s 300GB hard drive was getting full with less than 200GB data showing on it. I ran [Baobab](http://www.marzocca.net/linux/baobab/) on it and discovered that every time I deleted a file while remotely accessing the server from a Windows machine, that file went not into the Trash folder like normal, but into a hidden auxiliary trash folder. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2009, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/7 "2009-04-06T21:31:27Z")
Are you sure it’s not storing copies of your system restore points, because they can take up about 3 or 4 gigs a time, can’t they? ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2009, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/8 "2009-04-06T21:40:42Z")
> [@Drain\_Bead](#): > > I’ve had an Eee PC for a few months. It has what appears to be a partitioned hard drive (or two hard drives, a C: and a D:). For the past month or so, no matter what I do, the C: drive is always critically full. Earlier today I deleted about a gig’s worth of programs that it came with that I never use, and it was full again within an hour. Was it actually empty(-ier) when you deleted the stuff? Like, did you see the free space increase, but then it was gone later? If so, this could be a runaway log file of some sort that’s constantly being appended to. It doesn’t take that much data output to fill up a Gig of space in an hour. ---
**Author:** ![Dog80](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@Dog80](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dog80)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/9 "2009-04-07T00:41:43Z")
The most likely culprit, as **KneadToKnow** mentioned is the swap file. The other possible culprit might be hibernation. Whenever you hibernate the computer, it dumps the memory contents into a file as big as the memory. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/10 "2009-04-07T00:47:18Z")
Thirding the swap file. Also dropped in to mention the [eeeuser.com forums](http://forum.eeeuser.com/index.php), a GREAT place for anything Eee-related. ---
**Author:** ![Electronic\_Chaos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Electronic\_Chaos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Electronic_Chaos)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/11 "2009-04-07T01:53:31Z")
> [@HorseloverFat](#): > > A program like [tree view](http://www.treeview.net/tv/download.asp) will show you your hard drive arranged by file/folder size. Also, you could check out [WinDirStat](http://windirstat.info/). I like it because in addition to showing you the file tree, it also has a chart at the bottom that acts as a graphical representation of your hard drive - with larger files being represented as larger chunks, which are all divided into color-coded folders. It’s a very useful tool. ---
**Author:** ![Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/do_not_taunt/32/2968_2.png) [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/12 "2009-04-07T06:13:52Z")
> [@Dog80](#): > > The most likely culprit, as **KneadToKnow** mentioned is the swap file. > > The other possible culprit might be hibernation. Whenever you hibernate the computer, it dumps the memory contents into a file as big as the memory. Voting against swap file and hibernation. On my PC (Windows XP), I have two hidden, system files in my root directory (c:) called hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys which are 1 GB and 1.6 GB, respectively. I’m not running very many applications at the moment, and obviously am not hibernated, so it’s pretty clear Windows is reserving this space for future use, which would suggest that neither file will grow (particularly true for hibernation, which is roughly the size of my available physical RAM.) If they don’t grow, they’re not the source of **Drain Bean** ’s disappearing free space. ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/13 "2009-04-07T06:25:33Z")
> [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](#): > > Voting against swap file and hibernation. On my PC (Windows XP), I have two hidden, system files in my root directory (c:) called hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys which are 1 GB and 1.6 GB, respectively. I’m not running very many applications at the moment, and obviously am not hibernated, so it’s pretty clear Windows is reserving this space for future use, which would suggest that neither file will grow (particularly true for hibernation, which is roughly the size of my available physical RAM.) If they don’t grow, they’re not the source of **Drain Bean** ’s disappearing free space. But the swap file can be configured to be either fixed, **or to automatically grow as needed**. ---
**Author:** ![GSV\_Consolation\_of\_Dreams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f1d935/32.png) [@GSV\_Consolation\_of\_Dreams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GSV_Consolation_of_Dreams)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/14 "2009-04-07T10:24:06Z")
**DMC** is right. You should set the swap file minimum AND maximum values to the same number, about 1.5x the RAM on your PC. That will stop the file from growing and shrinking all the time, which causes fragmentation of the disk as well. I would also recommend a free program called [CCleaner](http://www.ccleaner.com/), which is freeware and very good at rooting out harddisk cruft of various kinds. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-filling-up-my-hard-drive/492168/15 "2009-04-07T21:00:53Z")
I’ll take “porn” for fifty blanks, Les.