Full "C" Drive

[shiner]

Please can someone help!!!

 

My system tells me that I only have 129mb of free space on a 80gb Hard drive...but I know that I could not possibly be this full. I have had several problems with viruses, but believe that this has now been resolved. I am not sure whether there are viruses that can do this or not, but it does appear likely that this was the cause. What I need to know is what could possibly be wrong, and how do I resolve....by the way my system tells me that my hard drive is 149gb full ( I know I purchased a 80gb hard drive). I am no whiz when it comes to PC's, but am not that bad either...this has me stumped

 

Regards to anyone who can help

Shiner

[Tony D]

Can you determine how much space is being used by each folder at root level? For instance, how much is in the Windows folder? How much is being used by the Program Files folder and so on. Add them up and see where all the space is being used.

 

When you add up all the space used by all the folder, it should be about 80 GB. If not, then there's a problem. I've seen where Lenovo, the old IBM, machines run a backup program in the background. The files are invisible. When I added up the space required for each folder at root level, it didn't add up to what Windows was reporting was being used on the hard drive. I had to turn off the backup program.

[shiner]

Kelly

Just on error that does'nt really make much difference [160GB hard drive, but problem still the same] I have opened my C Drive and highlighted everything, right clicked and opened the properties and it tells me Size: 129 GB (138,557,209,474 bytes) Size on disk: 128 GB (138,436,102,212 bytes) but I have absolutely no idea what the hell could be this size...thnaks for the response, and don't really know if this tells you anything, so any suggestions will do

 

Regards

Shiner

[hardware_dave]

This may helpfrom the tips forum

 

If you want to know ware all the space went on your 500gig drive try spacemonger -

 

SpaceMonger is a tool for keeping track of the free space on your computer. Each file or folder on a given drive is displayed in a box in the main window whose size is a relative comparison to all the other files in your system. So, for example, if the "Windows" box takes up 90% of the screen, the "C:\Windows" folder and all its sub-folders and files are taking up 90% of your "C:" drive.

 

http://www.download.com/SpaceMonger/3000-2248_4-10549663.html

 

Dave

[AdvancedSetup]

There is also TreeSize that is free.

 

TreeSize Free V2.1

 

Every hard disk is too small if you just wait long enough. TreeSize Free tells you where precious space has gone to. TreeSize Free can be started from the context menu of a folder or drive and shows you the size of this folder, including its subfolders. You can expand this folder in Explorer-like style and you will see the size of every subfolder. Scanning is done in a thread, so you can already see results while TreeSize Free is working. The space, which is wasted by the file system, can be displayed and the results can be printed in a report. TreeSize Free is freeware for Windows 9x/2000/XP/Vista.

http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

[shiner]

Thanks for the tip

I ran the Treesize application and it indicates that a windows folder called PCHEALTH contains 125gb of files which leads to some other questions.

1. waht is this folder there for

2. can I safely remove it

3. what are the implications of removing it, as sometimes windows will not let me remove anything as it says I do not have enough disk space...which is bloody ironic

 

Any help please

[RandyL]

Hi shiner;

Please wait for a reply. There are different possibilities for this.

Now we know where the space is used.

 

Most likely this is a legitimate application gone amok.

Possibly a third party PCHEALTH Optimizer program.

PCHEALTH.exe might be a virus

 

Stand by;

RandyL

[Tony D]

Wow - that's impressive. Wish I could get 125GB onto an 80 GB drive.

 

MS KnowledeBase (MSKB) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q308549/ says that XP does indeed keep some history info in Windows\PCHealth\HelpCtr\Datacoll. My XP machine has there files but it the PCHealth foler is only 45 MB.

 

If your folder is located somewhere else, I'd be suspicious of malware.

[shiner]

Helpers

In my windows folder there are three subfolders ERROREP,HELPCTR, and UploadLB. Within the ERROREP folder there is a sub folder titled "User Dumps" which contains hundreds of files, all beginning with "svchost". Treesize identifies this folder as the one with 125gb of info

[shiner]

To all

I have now fixed the problem, and feel it may be worth posting for someone to learn from. Within the ERROREP folder there is a sub folder titled "User Dumps" which contains hundreds of files, these are hdmp files which are basically from the error reports to Microsoft. I copied these to my desktop and created a new folder, then deleted all files, which freed up 125 GB of memory, all now seems to be working fine...........hope this helps someone else who may come across "full disk space" when you know it really isn't full

 

Regards

Shiner

[Seth]

Thanks for the update shiner. Looks like it was just a corrupt file or folder. I had a similar issue a while back with a temp file showing as 13 GB.