Where has 8GB of space gone?!?!

Hi all,

Got a harddrive problem at the moment. I run a vista partition on my laptop HDD. At 29GB it's usually tight but everything fits, moving as many cache files, virtual memory files etc as I can to the D drive.

However at the moment I'm showing 600mb of free space. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, I'd just go and delete a load of temp files and I'd have my normal 6-7gb buffer. But this time I can't find out where the space has gone.

C: shows 29.2GB capacity with 28.6GB used and 637mb free.

Total list of stuff on the C: is:

AVG8 vault - 2mb.
Perflogs - empty
Program files - 2gb
Program Data - 0.5gb
Users - 2.5gb
Vuescan - 11mb
Windows - 14gb
a file called Bootsek.bat - 8kb.

I make that add up to about 20gb - which means that 8gb is just missing. I've got hidden files showing (AVG & Program data are hidden), I've run disk cleanup loads of times to delete temp files etc, I've given it a reboot and run disk cleanup again...

How do I find out where my space has gone?!

All replies most welcome! Cheers all.

Is it in your recycle bin?
Or have you checked system restore?

Recycle bin is empty. Where does system restore store files on the disk? Surely it would be accessible in explorer somewhere?

I downloaded a program to show my disk usage and it agrees with me - 20gb used which should leave about 10 free as a buffer... Very confused :E

http://www.flickr.com/photos/3539833...26427/sizes/o/

Ah - found it. It was indeed the system restore points which managed to take 10gb of space and leave me with half a gig free. That can't be normal, surely? Thanks for pointint me in the right direction llolloy :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by brammers

Ah - found it. It was indeed the system restore points which managed to take 10gb of space and leave me with half a gig free. That can't be normal, surely? Thanks for pointint me in the right direction llolloy :)

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I guess rather than filling the drive up entirely it would have deleted old restore points when that space was needed.

Just set a lower percentage limit. I used to hate system restore in XP, but it's actually saved me a good bit of time with some other laptops since Vista, and it's a bit less intrusive now, so I keep it enabled.

Have u tried a PC Tool called "Crap Cleaner" or "CCleaner" by Piriform for short??? I use it once a month or so to clean out all the rubbish windows stores without us ever knowing!!! Good little application, if u use it remember to uncheck clear out temporary files and passwords etc, or all ur saved logins will be deleted!