Where has 8GB of space gone?!?!

[brammers]

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.

[llololloy]

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

[brammers]

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/

[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

[this_is_gav]

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

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.

[jdmanonamission]

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!