Where has my spare drive space gone in C: in Win7?

Lo dudes

I've got an 80gig SSD Intel drive for Win7 and apps. I'm pretty careful what goes on it, as I like it less than 75% full. Win7 places game saves and stuff like that in there and I have Office and Windows Live dtuff on it.....

but today.. I opened My Computer and it was RED!!!! running out of space.

The issue with Windows is that you can't see how large FOLDERS are.. so if anyone has any good bolt on software that sholws folder size..that would be ace. As it was.. I went through loads of folders, right clicking and seeeing what was suddenly full... not a lot really.

I'm an old man now... over 40... and with age comes a certain.... skill set. More brain power.. more.. ponder, less dismantling.

I sat, pondered with a cold bottle of Thatchers Gold cider.. what have I done... what's changed?

Steam was downloading loads of nice games (thanks Ferral) but I know they go onto my games drive, not onto this one.. though Win7 does place a few files on the C drive.

then.. it occured.

I've just added the spare 8gig DDR3 back into my PC two days ago. I bought 16 gig.. dropped it to 8 gig to see if there was a difference a long time ago (there wasn't really) and never put it back.

So.. adding the system ram back in.. going from 8gig to 16 gig has.....

changed my Virtual Memory Page File.

Windows.. being clever.. is given a double helping of RAM and has decided to hep me by then allocating a double helping of Page File tat I don't need.

Switched it off.... all of it...

and now have more spare space than before.

Be warned... this stuff bites you on the ass sometimes ;)

hey.. WIN WIN.. the advertising links HEXUS uses has just found CANS OF THATCHERS in packs of 24 for good value too!!!!

Spacemonger
SpaceSniffer

Check them out :)

I know you've solved it but...

windirstat, also if you use hibernation it will take up as much HDD space for the hibernation file as I found out once :)

I use treesize http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/ there's a free version. ;)

as to c: filling up, I've noticed a lot software is dumping lots of :censored: into user folders, appdata being a key one, but a lot of stuff isn't clearing it's cache and temporary data, if you use chrome then that's a big one.

+1 on treesize free

Assuming you have win 7 and your install disk is pre sp1. Or if you havent already done so open a command prompt with admin rights and enter the following you deletes the files which allow you to roll back before sp1 was installed.

Dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded

http://www.ghacks.net/2011/02/23/rem...up-disk-space/

Yeah the three things I check are disk cleanup (right click on drive, tools) to get rid of temporary folders and hotfix installers (ccleaner does this and then some if you prefer); hibernation; and system managed pagefile (I set to fixed size).