What is using 15Gb on my C drive?

[Jim]

When I add up the sizes of all the folders in my C drive it comes to
approx 27.7Gb used including my 1Gb Page File, but when I check the
properties for my C drive it says 43.1Gb used.

That is a discrepancy of 15.4Gb so I am wondering what is using that
space. Any Ideas?

Another stange thing is that my Windows folder is 17.7Gb but when I
hover the mouse it says: Larger than 47.2Gb.

Can someone please explain this to me?

Thanks!

 

[richard]

When I add up the sizes of all the folders in my C drive it comes to
approx 27.7Gb used including my 1Gb Page File, but when I check the
properties for my C drive it says 43.1Gb used.

That is a discrepancy of 15.4Gb so I am wondering what is using that
space. Any Ideas?

Another stange thing is that my Windows folder is 17.7Gb but when I
hover the mouse it says: Larger than 47.2Gb.

Can someone please explain this to me?

Thanks!

My guess is that the extra space is being used up by hidden files.
Unlock the hidden files and see what it shows.

 

[Paul in Houston TX]

When I add up the sizes of all the folders in my C drive it comes to
approx 27.7Gb used including my 1Gb Page File, but when I check the
properties for my C drive it says 43.1Gb used.

That is a discrepancy of 15.4Gb so I am wondering what is using that
space. Any Ideas?

Another stange thing is that my Windows folder is 17.7Gb but when I
hover the mouse it says: Larger than 47.2Gb.

Can someone please explain this to me?

Thanks!

Are you adding in the subfolders, hidden, and system files?
My 7 machine Windows folder and subs use 18.7G.
Its Win folder has 15,000 subfolders and 76,000 files.

 

[John Williamson]

When I add up the sizes of all the folders in my C drive it comes to
approx 27.7Gb used including my 1Gb Page File, but when I check the
properties for my C drive it says 43.1Gb used.

That is a discrepancy of 15.4Gb so I am wondering what is using that
space. Any Ideas?

Another stange thing is that my Windows folder is 17.7Gb but when I
hover the mouse it says: Larger than 47.2Gb.

Can someone please explain this to me?

Do you have compression turned on? I had the same situation on an
EEEPC701 netbook, where I had to compress the C: drive to fit XP onto it.

As others have said, hidden folders are also a possibility.

 

[Jim]

My guess is that the extra space is being used up by hidden files.
Unlock the hidden files and see what it shows.

Thanks. I forgot to delete hiberfil.sys and it is about 12 gb.

 

[John Williamson]

Thanks. I forgot to delete hiberfil.sys and it is about 12 gb.

If you've got hibernation enabled, it will get re-created next time you
hibernate to match the size of your installed RAM.

 

[Andy Burns]

When I add up the sizes of all the folders in my C drive it comes to
approx 27.7Gb used including my 1Gb Page File, but when I check the
properties for my C drive it says 43.1Gb used.

That is a discrepancy of 15.4Gb so I am wondering what is using that
space. Any Ideas?

Another stange thing is that my Windows folder is 17.7Gb but when I
hover the mouse it says: Larger than 47.2Gb.

Can someone please explain this to me?

The WinSxS folder will confuse a lot of file utilities, you get one file
with hard links to it in multiple folders, so the files are easily
double-counted.

 

[Paul]

The WinSxS folder will confuse a lot of file utilities, you get one file
with hard links to it in multiple folders, so the files are easily
double-counted.

It's too bad Windows Explorer didn't have changes made to it, so when you
query a folder, it can say "4GB of unique files and 5GB of shared files,
for a total of 9GB". So that you'd get the idea there is a potential
for the 5GB to be double-counted. I don't understand why they didn't
do some work on the File Manager, to match the new emphasis on hard-links.

Paul

 

[Philip Herlihy]

Try this excellent free space auditing tool.
http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

 

[richard]

Thanks. I forgot to delete hiberfil.sys and it is about 12 gb.

Cool. So now when your machine crashes, you can kick yourself hard for
being a dumbass.
If you need more space, buy another hard drive.

 

[Dave-UK]

Cool. So now when your machine crashes, you can kick yourself hard for
being a dumbass.
If you need more space, buy another hard drive.

How does deleting the hiberfil.sys file make the machine crash ?
I always disable hibernation, which deletes that file, and I've never
experienced a system crash.

 

[Bert]

In richard

Cool. So now when your machine crashes, you can kick yourself hard for
being a dumbass.

Why? The hibernation file is only needed when turning the machine on
after having been hibernated. Once the machine's up and running, it's
not needed.

As someone has already pointed out, the hibernation file will be
re-created the next time the system is hibernated.

If you need more space, buy another hard drive.

The OP asked what's taking up the unaccounted-for space. He said nothing
about needing more space.

What's your problem?

 

[richard]

How does deleting the hiberfil.sys file make the machine crash ?
I always disable hibernation, which deletes that file, and I've never
experienced a system crash.

Just because a file size is outrageously large, isn't a reason to delete
it.
Since this file is recreated when needed, why delete it?
So you delete the file to get more space.
When it's needed, now it can't be recreated because there isn't enough room
due to you adding in more stuff.

LEAVE THE DAMN FILES IN THE OS ALONE!

 

[Ken Blake]

Just because a file size is outrageously large, isn't a reason to delete
it.
Since this file is recreated when needed, why delete it?
So you delete the file to get more space.
When it's needed, now it can't be recreated because there isn't enough room
due to you adding in more stuff.

Some of us (me, for example) *never* hibernate, and have no need of
hiberfil.sys. It's never needed and never gets recreated.

And as Dave-UK said, and as you ignored, deleting it does *not* make
the system crash. Your rude statement "So now when your machine
crashes, you can kick yourself hard for being a dumbass" was
completely wrong.

 

[Ian Jackson]

Try this excellent free space auditing tool.
http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

The ones I've used are:
'WinDirStat' (extremely informative).
http://sourceforge.net/projects/windirstat/
Also 'SpaceMonger' (which is somewhat similar, but looks pretty
horrible).
http://www.aplusfreeware.com/categories/LFWV/SpaceMonger.html
'Scanner' is also interesting.
http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/index.html
Not sure if the last two run on W7.

 

[Dave-UK]

Just because a file size is outrageously large, isn't a reason to delete
it.
Since this file is recreated when needed, why delete it?
So you delete the file to get more space.
When it's needed, now it can't be recreated because there isn't enough room
due to you adding in more stuff.

LEAVE THE DAMN FILES IN THE OS ALONE!

You need to read what I said.
I'll keep the sentences short for you.
I don't want the hibernation feature.
I turn off the hibernation feature.
When hibernation is turned off Windows deletes hiberfil.sys.
Here's some more information, if you are interested:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920730

 

[Paul]

Cool. So now when your machine crashes, you can kick yourself hard for
being a dumbass.
If you need more space, buy another hard drive.

It's perfectly safe to go around deleting stuff - if you have a backup
to work with. The dangerous part, is when you decide to try something,
without adequate preparation before doing it.

I managed to trash Windows 7. I didn't delete anything either.
I accessed System Volume Information from Linux, and on the
next attempt to boot, the automated recovery couldn't fix whatever
the problem was. (It made three tries and failed.) Good thing,
purely by chance, I'd done a backup just before trying that.
I restored from backup, no problem at all. No permanent damage done.

It may have been my attempts to "read" VSS files. The checksum on
the files was exactly zero, so they weren't ordinary files. I don't
know exactly what the failure mechanism was, but booting back to
Windows in that case, no longer worked.

So if you want to go "adventuring", no problem, make a backup.

Paul

 

[Krypto]

It's perfectly safe to go around deleting stuff - if you have a backup
to work with. The dangerous part, is when you decide to try something,
without adequate preparation before doing it.

I managed to trash Windows 7. I didn't delete anything either.
I accessed System Volume Information from Linux, and on the
next attempt to boot, the automated recovery couldn't fix whatever
the problem was. (It made three tries and failed.) Good thing,
purely by chance, I'd done a backup just before trying that.
I restored from backup, no problem at all. No permanent damage done.

It may have been my attempts to "read" VSS files. The checksum on
the files was exactly zero, so they weren't ordinary files. I don't
know exactly what the failure mechanism was, but booting back to
Windows in that case, no longer worked.

So if you want to go "adventuring", no problem, make a backup.

Paul

So true! I always have a backup to restore my system if something goes
wrong. The backup lets me try things with Windows without fear as it
only takes about 15 min to restore my system. I have learned a lot
about Windows over the years by trial and error and of course there
has been many errors but from each one I learn. I took and passed the
Comptia A+ course a few years back, but I have learned much, much more
by trial and error, solving my problems through research on the
Internet and by asking questions in newsgroups like this one.

I don't use hybernation so I turned it off a long time ago. I have
never had a system crash that was caused by this, so to the poster
that made the "Dumbass" remark has a lot to learn.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Some of us (me, for example) *never* hibernate, and have no need of
hiberfil.sys. It's never needed and never gets recreated.

And as Dave-UK said, and as you ignored, deleting it does *not* make
the system crash. Your rude statement "So now when your machine
crashes, you can kick yourself hard for being a dumbass" was
completely wrong.

Possibly what you quoted was an accidental & unacknowledged
self-referent remark.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

The checksum on
the files was exactly zero, so they weren't ordinary files.

One method of checksumming is to embed the negative or complement of the
checksum of the rest of the file in the file so that the total checksum
becomes zero.

Tricky, IMO