Tech Q: Hard Drive suddenly filling up, how to find files causing problem

[Clayton_e]

My hard drive, out of 140 gigs.. Was suddenly down to 40 gigs free. I did a systems clean up and got a whopping 2 gigs free out of that.

I have an external terabyte that I dump just about everything onto.. I poked around and couldn't find any reason that the 100 or so gigs I had free the last time I checked suddenly went down to such a low number. hrm.. well itunes podcasts are saved to the C drive instead of the external.. but I have.. like 6 gigs of stuff there. Besides that.. hrm.. nope.. no clue.

Any ideas how to find these phantom files? I don't want to check in a month and find that my computer is full when I have a perfectly good terabyte that's less than half full any of these files, if needed, could go to.

[Truth and Beauty]

I love WinDirStat. It will take a while to draw its picture, but once you see the picture it's obvious where your space is going to.
http://windirstat.info/

[Guizmeaux]

That's pretty neat, T&B. I've used Treesize Pro in the past but the graphical representation in Windirstat is very novel.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn't report on hidden partitions, nor does it provide sizing for folders to which you do not have access. So if what Windirstat comes up with doesn't match the amount of space that Windows reports, you'd know there was a problem, (there is some malware that acts as a torrent and creates hidden directories to which even admins don't have access).

Caveat Emptor: I just tried it out on a VMWare virtual machine, which does not have AV on it. I can't provide any assurances that it's safe or won't generally hose your computer. But nor am I suggesting it's not safe.

[TheFlame]

I usually just use Search and search the whole drive for files > 10MB.

[tunaman]

Well, knowing what OS you're using would certainly help.

It could be System Restore points taking up all that room. If (and only if) your computer is exhibiting no other problems, go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. Click the "More Options" tab and click the "Clean Up" button under "System Restore" (XP) or "System Restore and Shadow Copies" (Vista).

Obviously, this will delete all but the most recent Restore Point (and\or all of your Shadow Copies, if using "Business" versions of Vista), so be careful with this.

[Truth and Beauty]

Unsurprisingly, it doesn't report on hidden partitions, nor does it provide sizing for folders to which you do not have access. So if what Windirstat comes up with doesn't match the amount of space that Windows reports, you'd know there was a problem, (there is some malware that acts as a torrent and creates hidden directories to which even admins don't have access).

I'm still on XP so I tend to assume that everyone is always running as admin. But I guess in the Brave New World of Vista this isn't true anymore?

Caveat Emptor: I just tried it out on a VMWare virtual machine, which does not have AV on it. I can't provide any assurances that it's safe or won't generally hose your computer. But nor am I suggesting it's not safe.

I guess I should have covered this. I found it through sourceforge.net IIRC ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/windirstat/ ) and I always start with the assumption that open source projects are safe. Is this the wrong approach?

[Guizmeaux]

I guess I should have covered this. I found it through sourceforge.net IIRC ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/windirstat/ ) and I always start with the assumption that open source projects are safe. Is this the wrong approach?

I work in IT for a bank, so I am probably more paranoid than most. I assume that an opensource project will get dogpiled pretty quickly if it's malware, but YMMV. I usually assume the worst until I can prove otherswise.