Strange Question..

Here's a strange one.. I have on average 80-100 gigs of free space normally
on my hard drive. Last night I noticed I was at 45 gigs free. I cleaned up
some files etc and ended at 55 gigs free.. Still 30-40 gigs off what is
normally free. This morning I wake up and I have 14 gigs free, the computer
was on all night. I have checked everything I can think of to find the
missing space. 70 gigs does not disapear in 2 nights. The only changes made
to the system was a Windows update on Nov 20th, for Windows update, that is
around when this started. The only software that runs in the background is
Diskeeper 2008 which has been running since Day 1 of installation of Vista,
(last June). and Windows Home Server Connector software. Nothing else out of
the norm is running.. Any ideas on what could be eating hard drive space?
Thanks in advance..

Thanks for the info, but I did run a disk cleanup and also deleted all but
the last restore point last night, but when I woke up this morning I was an
additional 30 gigs lost.. I'm sure tomorrow morning I will find out what is
causing this problem when I wake up to find the computer has 0 space free
and either it be locked up or at least have an error message..


"power 3" <> wrote in message
news:49288236$...
> Al D wrote:
>> Here's a strange one.. I have on average 80-100 gigs of free space
>> normally on my hard drive. Last night I noticed I was at 45 gigs free. I
>> cleaned up some files etc and ended at 55 gigs free.. Still 30-40 gigs
>> off what is normally free. This morning I wake up and I have 14 gigs
>> free, the computer was on all night. I have checked everything I can
>> think of to find the missing space. 70 gigs does not disapear in 2
>> nights. The only changes made to the system was a Windows update on Nov
>> 20th, for Windows update, that is around when this started. The only
>> software that runs in the background is Diskeeper 2008 which has been
>> running since Day 1 of installation of Vista, (last June). and Windows
>> Home Server Connector software. Nothing else out of the norm is running..
>> Any ideas on what could be eating hard drive space? Thanks in advance..
>
> Welcome to the Vista, the horrible version of windows.
>
> Your problem is called shadow copy, aka old versions.
>
> Vista wants to keep copies of every single file you move or delete from
> your computer!
>
> Isnt that stupid? YES IT IS!
>
> you need to do a disk clean up, cleaning these stupid files is one of the
> options there
>
> go here:
> http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Win...139d91033.mspx
>
> and notice this:
> System Restore and Shadow Copies. Prompts you to delete all but the most
> recent restore point on the disk.

To answer the 2 quesitons, yes I have gone through the HD looking for larger
then normal files, and can't seem to find any although I will look again.
and yes Diskeeper is running in VSS mode.. Thanks for the help guys..


"Louie" <> wrote in message
news:...
> On Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:14:32 -0500, "Al D" <>
> wrote:
>
>>Thanks for the info, but I did run a disk cleanup and also deleted all but
>>the last restore point last night, but when I woke up this morning I was
>>an
>>additional 30 gigs lost.. I'm sure tomorrow morning I will find out what
>>is
>>causing this problem when I wake up to find the computer has 0 space free
>>and either it be locked up or at least have an error message..
>
> Is Diskeeper running in VSS Compatibility mode on your system
> drive/partition? It should be.

In article <49288236$>,
power 3 <> wrote:
>
>Your problem is called shadow copy, aka old versions.
>
>Vista wants to keep copies of every single file you move or delete from
>your computer!
>
>Isnt that stupid? YES IT IS!
>

No, shadow copy is very excellent. It's a very advanced feature
for a workstation filesystem, and allows you to make backups of files in
use as well as recover files that you "accidentally" deleted or modified.

It doesn't precisely use "extra" space, it's called "copy on write"
so for instance if you create file foo there's a single copy that exists
in both the real file system and the shadow copy. If you change foo then
only that block is actually copied, not the whole file.

Since you have already tried System Restore without much success, I suggest
you make sure all your data is (are?) backed up to an external drive, and
then wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything. I do this once or twice a
year and it usually gets rid of all the little bugs and glitches that have
mounted up. Takes some time, but it's good for the soul.

Good luck

"Al D" wrote:

> Here's a strange one.. I have on average 80-100 gigs of free space normally
> on my hard drive. Last night I noticed I was at 45 gigs free. I cleaned up
> some files etc and ended at 55 gigs free.. Still 30-40 gigs off what is
> normally free. This morning I wake up and I have 14 gigs free, the computer
> was on all night. I have checked everything I can think of to find the
> missing space. 70 gigs does not disapear in 2 nights. The only changes made
> to the system was a Windows update on Nov 20th, for Windows update, that is
> around when this started. The only software that runs in the background is
> Diskeeper 2008 which has been running since Day 1 of installation of Vista,
> (last June). and Windows Home Server Connector software. Nothing else out of
> the norm is running.. Any ideas on what could be eating hard drive space?
> Thanks in advance..
>

Looks like that is what I might have to do I just lost 5 gigs of space in a
matter of 45 minutes with the system just sitting idle...


"Tonyo UK" <> wrote in message
news:FDC24206-EFD3-4E6A-9F86-...
> Since you have already tried System Restore without much success, I
> suggest
> you make sure all your data is (are?) backed up to an external drive, and
> then wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything. I do this once or twice
> a
> year and it usually gets rid of all the little bugs and glitches that have
> mounted up. Takes some time, but it's good for the soul.
>
> Good luck
>
> "Al D" wrote:
>
>> Here's a strange one.. I have on average 80-100 gigs of free space
>> normally
>> on my hard drive. Last night I noticed I was at 45 gigs free. I cleaned
>> up
>> some files etc and ended at 55 gigs free.. Still 30-40 gigs off what is
>> normally free. This morning I wake up and I have 14 gigs free, the
>> computer
>> was on all night. I have checked everything I can think of to find the
>> missing space. 70 gigs does not disapear in 2 nights. The only changes
>> made
>> to the system was a Windows update on Nov 20th, for Windows update, that
>> is
>> around when this started. The only software that runs in the background
>> is
>> Diskeeper 2008 which has been running since Day 1 of installation of
>> Vista,
>> (last June). and Windows Home Server Connector software. Nothing else out
>> of
>> the norm is running.. Any ideas on what could be eating hard drive space?
>> Thanks in advance..
>>

"Al D" <> wrote:

>Looks like that is what I might have to do I just lost 5 gigs of space in a
>matter of 45 minutes with the system just sitting idle...

Have you run several of the leading malware detectors/removers?

Richie Hardwick

try this:
http://www.gur.in/j/index.php?option...download&gid=9
run a full scan and it will detect that hidden mysterious stuff
Also try this
Start>run>MRT and run a complete scan

--
dines

Hope that works ! !
Dinesh.

"Al D" <> wrote in message
news:2917DF37-6DC2-4837-BE05-...
> To answer the 2 quesitons, yes I have gone through the HD looking for
> larger then normal files, and can't seem to find any although I will look
> again. and yes Diskeeper is running in VSS mode.. Thanks for the help
> guys..
>

Have a look at your live messenger folder, checking the size of the folder
against the total contents. You will need to select view hidden files on the
folder options view tab.

Live messenger used to have a bug under XP that caused it to report a
folders size as several Gb when in fact it held a few k. I haven't seen it
in Vista yet but I'm fairly new to it.

The solution was to rename the offending folder .old and create a new folder
with the original name and then copy the contents over (making sure you
copied any hidden files as well). You can delete the .old folder once you
are sure everything is working as normal.

On Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:14:01 -0800, Tonyo UK wrote:

> Since you have already tried System Restore without much success, I
> suggest you make sure all your data is (are?) backed up to an external
> drive, and then wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything. I do this
> once or twice a year and it usually gets rid of all the little bugs and
> glitches that have mounted up. Takes some time, but it's good for the
> soul.

Pretty amazing what folks will put up with. My main computer has been
running Gentoo Linux for about three years now - I've not reinstalled,
just keep doing the rolling updates. It's as fast now as when originally
installed and disk space is accounted for by data I've added.



>
> Good luck
>
> "Al D" wrote:
>
>> Here's a strange one.. I have on average 80-100 gigs of free space
>> normally on my hard drive. Last night I noticed I was at 45 gigs free.
>> I cleaned up some files etc and ended at 55 gigs free.. Still 30-40
>> gigs off what is normally free. This morning I wake up and I have 14
>> gigs free, the computer was on all night. I have checked everything I
>> can think of to find the missing space. 70 gigs does not disapear in 2
>> nights. The only changes made to the system was a Windows update on Nov
>> 20th, for Windows update, that is around when this started. The only
>> software that runs in the background is Diskeeper 2008 which has been
>> running since Day 1 of installation of Vista, (last June). and Windows
>> Home Server Connector software. Nothing else out of the norm is
>> running.. Any ideas on what could be eating hard drive space? Thanks in
>> advance..
>>