My C drive keeps losing space

[generalissimo]

My C drive has just lost about 200mb of data since booted. I have not downloaded anything. Please help.

Things I have tried
-Clearing temporary files
-Ran Malwarebytes and Kapersky both came up clean
-Disk error check came up with no errors
-Another user on the forum suggested it was the page file. If so how come it only started doing this on Monday and I have had my computer up and running since August? If this is the problem can someone please guide me through the page file resizing.
-I rarely download anything on my c drive and if i do i transfer it to my 1tb storage drive.
-Also my Ram usage and processor usage is normal


System Specs
Windows 7 64 Bit Professional
i7 3820
p9x79 pro
120gb Forcer Series SSD
1TB Seagate HD
8gb RAM

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/3756/capture88.jpg Here is a screenshot of page file

 

[RealBeast]

There are a number of Windows files that will fill up a lot of space, and they can be done away with. Turn off system restore and delete the old restore files. Disable hibernation, which creates a large file. Also with that much ram if you don't run a number of VMs, move your paging file to the HDD and set it to a static size, with upper and lower size limit of 8192Mb.

Here is a good optimization guide that will explain all that and more: http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/

 

[generalissimo]

So you think its just an os issue not a virus. Ill try deleting 3 of the 4 restore points just to be safe. Then I will turn off system restore and see if it keeps goind down. Hibernation was disable by default when i installed windows 7.

 

[generalissimo]

it is now 65.2 from 65.4 since posting

 

[generalissimo]

Do you think I should just restore it?

 

[RealBeast]

Absolutely, Windows 7 is a space hog -- those files just keep growing in an effort to consume the whole drive.

The other thing that you can do is delete all the restore points but leave restore on for now, then install a program and see how much space that new restore point takes. It is a lot.

Restore is really not that important since you can easily do a repair install, which will repair Windows but leave all your data and programs intact. When you really have an issue restore is not much use anyway. Nonetheless, always do good backup (which does not include anything on an external drive since they have so many issues on their own) as you never know when things will go totally bad with a virus or something.

 

[RealBeast]

Do you think I should just restore it?

No! Don't restore, that is what is eating up space. Every time you install programs or do significant updates Windows creates a new restore point -- eating up more valuable space. I have it off on all my machines with SSDs.

If you are not comfortable doing that for some reason, just delete all restore points and then create a single new point and cut the amount of space allowed for restore points down from the baseline of 5-10% of your drive.

 

[generalissimo]

I just don't get whats making it go down and I don't want to turn off system restore yet because I noticed the system restore did not usage did not go up so what took the 200mbs

 

[RealBeast]

Perhaps you need to start at a basic level and clear out all the temp files and caches, which I routinely do using the very good freeware program CCleaner ( http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download ).

I would really not worry about a few hundred megs of space, that could just be a lot of cached Internet files, worry about the gigs of space taken up by useless stuff as explained in the ssd optimization guide.

 

[generalissimo]

Thanks for the help will select you as best answer if all goes good.

 

[generalissimo]

Best answer selected by generalissimo.

 

[generalissimo]

It turns out windows update downloads were taking up my space so i disabled it and now it has stabilized at 65.5gb free space

 

[jmichae3]

after some years with xp, 7, 8, discovered all take up about 62GB after service packs, updates. that's as big as it got as of not too long ago. xp system requirements are 1.5GB for initial install (did they change the page?). http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865
windows 7's system requirements are 16GB of space for initial install.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/system-requirements
you should have at least a 250-500GB drive to use windows minimum. I prefer to have a 2-4TB or larger drive, but the drives over 2TB must be GPT partitioned and require special BIOS configuration to support UEFI boot to install correctly to see the whole drive.

defrag will tell you it needs 15% free space to run (ouch).

restore points only last for 30 days and then get dropped. so it's not that big of a deal, keep your restore points.

what size is your hard disk? what is reported when you bring up my computer?

turn off virtual memory, your system will probably become more stable. I discovered 2 bugs in windows 7 virtual memory on my new box (win7ult64sp1retail). but it won't fix the disk space problem.

with windows 7 I discovered it was writing 2,422,996,992 bytes/day to my (what I thought were) pretty much unused SSD's. SSD's have a rather limited qty of Program/Erase(PE) cycles per block (800 for TLC, 3000-30,000 for MLC, 100,000 for SLC. but I still found out that the drive is going to theoretically last about 13-50 years depending on how many hours in the day you use your computer. I still treat the SSD gingerly as far as writes (I have a samsung TLC), no defragging or full formatting or wipes if I can help it.

hard disk writes don't matter, but they have a lifespan of about 5 years. there is drive closing software available like http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/ it's the best drive cloning/upgrade software on the market (can be buggy once in a while, so work with tech support on it). compared to the other solutions I have tried, this one works far better. this may be your best solution. buy a drive and a drive dock, and clone your drive while growing it/filling available space. if you choose that option, it won't be same size partition as old drive, it will have more space and make use of the larger space of the new drive.

a good USB drive dock that has a usable fan is http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707260
crank up the fan to max.

do a rootkit scan. mcafee has rootkit detection/fix tools. http://www.mcafee.com/us/downloads/free-tools/index.aspx
if it's malware, there may be a need for a wipe and reinstall.

do NOT clear out temp files except for possibly .log files, and even then sometimes those are part of installers. the temp directory should be touched by anything. installers tend to get installed there. antivuruses mistakenly think this is a good place to clean things up. but like on *nix, you don't mess with /var/tmp just like on windows you don't mess with windows temp dir. if you are using *nix utilities on windows, you may have a number of temp dirs.
software uses temp files as an interim for making other files, possibly when you save documents. they can also be left around in mass quantities, as in the case of some printer logs.

 

[Odie15q]

Hi, im not a computer expert (healthcare background) but i had the same problem and tried all suggestions here and from other websites. But all solutions including the ones mentioned here are all temporary. It freed up space but didnt fix the real problem which is " hard disk continously losing space for no reason". Now, I think i found what's really causing it and i want to share it with all the sites i visited. I had about 122gb unaccounted for. Everytime I scan my drive with WinDirStat or SpaceSniffer and reaches 50% to 60%, it slows down (i believe at this point it's scanning a large amount of file). I also uninstalled my anti virus and tried several others but my laptop came out clean. Then using resource monitor, i noticed that there is a lot of network activity even though im not surfing the web. The names of the activities are very suspicous like "sunroof discount.com, etc". So i tried to investigate and found out that sysWOW64 folder is involved. But after some research, i learned that its an important file. I also scanned it for viruses but stopped because it was taking forever to finish the scan. So while on safe mode and logged in as admin, i checked all folders in that folder, and found a folder named "Content.IE5". It is a hidden file (google how to unhide a folder), and when i opened it, it took several minutes to load (the folder is already open and it was still loading files) Anyways, i went to properties and checked the size of the folder and it was 100gb!! There were htm files, JSON files, file folders ( i think all internet related files), etc inside. I didnt want to scan it with antivirus again because it will take forever and im pretty sure that i dont need these files. So i deleted it (still deleting it). When i hit delete, the message window said, preparing to delete, preparing to delete took overnight, i woke up and it's still preparing to delete it ( about 9 hours) . It finally started to delete it and the message said "deleting 3,406,722 items (100gb) WOW! . And it says about 1 day remaining. Anyways, i researched what that folder is. I read from a site that one guy had the same problem, and suspected that the same folder was involved "Content.IE5". What he did was uninstall i ternet explorer 10, and now he's back to internet explorer 9 and it seemed to stop the problem. After im done deleting these files im gona do the same thing. Please check that folder because we might be having the same problem. Btw heres how you find it, go to drive c, windows, SysWOW64, config, systemprofile, AppData (not the application data folder), local, microsoft, windows, temporary internet files, Content.IE5. If internet explorer 10 is really involved, i hope that they will unf@ck this. please share if it worked for you.

 

[vixca]

There are a number of Windows files that will fill up a lot of space, and they can be done away with. Turn off system restore and delete the old restore files. Disable hibernation, which creates a large file. Also with that much ram if you don't run a number of VMs, move your paging file to the HDD and set it to a static size, with upper and lower size limit of 8192Mb.

Here is a good optimization guide that will explain all that and more: http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/

Thanks for ur comment.
It helps and eventually work!

 

[naruto uzumaki1]

Just turn off the restoring points .Now do as instructions below
Open System by clicking the Start button , right-clicking Computer, and then clicking Properties.
In the left pane, click System protection. ..their u can see the options for restore protecton active on your drives .turn off that protection .

 

[Tywyll Knight]

Here`s an answer i found worked ..also after I tried all above recommendations
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/293343-32-drive-losing-space

 

[fishingale]

Have had exactly the same thing happen to me after searching everywhere finally found that it was my Kapersky anti virus saving logs of up to 15 gb before I deleted Kapersky I had about 100 gb left of a 1000gb c drive after deleting now have 760 free with 140 used.
It is something to do with the settings but I have now gone to a Microsoft antivirus.
Tight lines
Stormy

My C drive has just lost about 200mb of data since booted. I have not downloaded anything. Please help.

Things I have tried
-Clearing temporary files
-Ran Malwarebytes and Kapersky both came up clean
-Disk error check came up with no errors
-Another user on the forum suggested it was the page file. If so how come it only started doing this on Monday and I have had my computer up and running since August? If this is the problem can someone please guide me through the page file resizing.
-I rarely download anything on my c drive and if i do i transfer it to my 1tb storage drive.
-Also my Ram usage and processor usage is normal


System Specs
Windows 7 64 Bit Professional
i7 3820
p9x79 pro
120gb Forcer Series SSD
1TB Seagate HD
8gb RAM

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/3756/capture88.jpg Here is a screenshot of page file

 

[Zedir]

Just turn off the restoring points .Now do as instructions below
Open System by clicking the Start button , right-clicking Computer, and then clicking Properties.
In the left pane, click System protection. ..their u can see the options for restore protecton active on your drives .turn off that protection .

Yep, that worked wonders just got back 40 GB of space just lowered max size to 10 GB
Thanks