Disk Space HELP!?

[syun_ukiya]

HELP!? What will I do! I've deleted almost all my files together with my games and I can't still free that much disk space!?

[Yamaneko]

Reformat?

[eestlinc]

get a second hard drive?

[crono_logical]

What OS are you using and how big are your HDs? Could be the recycle bin and System Restore hogging it all, as well as Windows and it's possible humungous swap files/hibernation files

[syun_ukiya]

oi I've used the disk cleanup option! Is there any other way?

[Dr Unne]

You didn't mention how big your HD is and what OS you're using. Uninstall some programs or something. Delete MP3s if you have some. Delete your internet cache. Empy out your Temp folders. Uninstall games. Go figure out what's taking up all your space and get rid of that. Getting rid of one huge massive program you have sitting on your HD is usually better than deleting a hundred tiny little files, because some programs are just huge.

[Killy]

You could always defrag you disc too.

[crono_logical]

NO NO NO WHY THE HECK ARE THERE SO MANY PEOPLE WITH THE STUPID MISCONCEPTION THAT DEFRAGGING GIVES YOU MORE SPACE?

Defragging rearranges stuff on the disk. On a FAT/FAT32 formatted HD which most people will Windows probably have, rearranging is rearranging, nothing more. The same number of file blocks or clusters used to store your stuff will be used at the start of defragging, and the same number will be used at the end, just in a different order for extra speed in accessing and creating files. You gain nothing in terms of space with defragging such disks. I don't think I can explain it any simpler than that.

[Killy]

I know all that, but the following quote got me confused.

Originally posted by syun_ukiya
HELP!? What will I do! I've deleted almost all my files together with my games and I can't still free that much disk space!?

My HD sometimes claims that there isnt any more space after I deleted lots of stuff, after I defrag, the space left on my HD appears correctly. I thought he had the same problem

*Hits cl*

Im not that dumb

[crono_logical]

Hmm.

In that case, only thing I can think of that causes that weird effect is the write caching on the disk (or similar), the changes don't all get committed (in <i>very</i> broad terms), causing inconsistencies on the disk - which is likely to happen on FAT disks after a nice blue screen of death. Which is where those lost cluster things come in when you do a scandisk or chkdsk. In which case, you may want to try running scandisk or chkdsk on the drive (depending on the windows version you got) to correct those errors.


BN: I guess if defragging fixed stuff for you, then lost clusters was quite likely the cause, because from what I remember from how Windows' defrag works is that the first 5 or 10% of the defrag is really a consistency check on the disk where it's running a scandisk of some sort and fixing the errors automatically for you unless you specified otherwise - if it's fixing the errors automatically, that explains why defragging appears to fix the free space reported because, after all, you're using the defrag program. Ah well. I blame old versions of windows for never telling you what it's really doing unless you do a bit of investigating


Anyway, do a scandisk or chkdsk first before a full defragment - it's much faster if it's disk inconsistencies/lost clusters causing the problem, especially since the defrag stage of the program doesn't increase the space.

[Citizen Bleys]

If you have Norton SystemWorks installed, empty your Norton Protected Files (left-click on the recycle bin).

With Norton Protected Files, if you delete a file, it still leaves the disk space occupied by that file reserved in case you want to undelete it.

[syun_ukiya]

uhm is it ok for me to delete all the TMP files?

[Rainecloud]

Yes. If they're in the "temp" folder, then they're safe to delete.

I doubt that will free up much (if any) space, though. Read crono_logical's last post, and try those things.

[Blue Headed Man]

DeFrag

[Yamaneko]

Originally posted by crono_logical
NO NO NO WHY THE HECK ARE THERE SO MANY PEOPLE WITH THE STUPID MISCONCEPTION THAT DEFRAGGING GIVES YOU MORE SPACE?