C drive space

Roger Wright

Amarnath S wrote:

Are the periodic Windows Updates eating up precious space?

Yes. Each time you update, Windows saves information to allow you to recover from a disaster, which often happens after Windows updates. If you survive an update (rare) you can delete the recovery file. By the way, next time Windows kills your system I'd consider putting all your Visual Studio and Office programs on the D: drive and try to save C: for the OS itself. You won't see a performance hit if the drives are physically in the same machine, but you might experience an improvement. The swap file is on the root drive, by default, and it helps a lot to give it as much space as you can.

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smcnulty2000

Definitely check your swap file, as was suggested by Damian. Move it to your d drive until you get this under control. Freeze its size on D and you should be able to continue fixing the machine even if you get even more full on C. I keep mine on its own partition. Makes for a very stable machine, even with lots of ram abuse. Good luck. I hope you don't have to do a rebuild.

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Dino Mulahusic

Check system restore settings and how much space it takes

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Amarnath S

Thanks for all your responses. SequioaView is superb. It has pinpointed big (huge ones for me now). There are two big ones - C:\pagefile.sys, and C:\hiberfil.sys (hidden files) - together, they occupy 3.5 gigs. Further, there are a number of *.msp files (about 50 of them, with an average size of 125 MB each) within C:\Windows\Installer. Googling on whether it is safe to delete them, and how ... Meanwhile, I freed some 2 gigs of space :-)

modified on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 2:30 AM

_Damian S_ · modified on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 2:30 AM

DO NOT DELETE THEM..... pagefile.sys is your memory swap file Hiberfil.sys is the hibernation file To adjust the pagefile, go to System then Advanced then virtual memory. To remove hiberfil.sys, switch off hibernation under Power Options.

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Amarnath S

Damian, Thanks for your cautionary note. No - I have not deleted them. I deleted some other huge files within My Documents (I never knew that they existed, until SequoiaView told me). Now, I have 3.28 GB free - this is really enough breathing space for me :-D

Rajesh R Subramanian · modified on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 2:30 AM

I found it out. C:\Windows is the culprit, occupying more than 10 Gigs. Deleting now... :cool: On a serious note, just buy a hard disk with a reasonably good amount of space.

It is a crappy thing, but it's life -^ Carlo Pallini

CPallini

Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:

I found it out. C:\Windows is the culprit, occupying more than 10 Gigs.

OK.

Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:

On a serious note, just buy a hard disk with a reasonably good amount of space.

No, no: do not feed the troll... :rolleyes:

If the Lord God Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation, I would have recommended something simpler. -- Alfonso the Wise, 13th Century King of Castile.
This is going on my arrogant assumptions. You may have a superb reason why I'm completely wrong. -- Iain Clarke
[My articles]

Rajesh R Subramanian

Actually, a few of his articles are pretty decent. But, I have no idea what drives him to ask this sort of questions (there was one yesterday as well). :)

It is a crappy thing, but it's life -^ Carlo Pallini

CPallini

I suppose you missed the troll. Hint: he lives in C: :laugh:

If the Lord God Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation, I would have recommended something simpler. -- Alfonso the Wise, 13th Century King of Castile.
This is going on my arrogant assumptions. You may have a superb reason why I'm completely wrong. -- Iain Clarke
[My articles]

Rajesh R Subramanian

I get it now. :laugh:

It is a crappy thing, but it's life -^ Carlo Pallini

Amarnath S

Is this question too insensible? Too dumb? I know not. I think one must have an attitude to learn from anyone, and that "there is no stupid question". One must have the humility to learn from even an ant.

Rajesh R Subramanian

I could have phrased it better. I wanted to convey that you've written some pretty good articles, but don't participate in the discussions as such. May be you should get involved into our discussions more, and you'll know what kind of rubbish we are into a barbaric herd of community we are fetishes we have stuff we like to talk about here? :)

It is a crappy thing, but it's life -^ Carlo Pallini

Caslen

There's a little known utility included with all versions of Windows designed just for this purpose - it's called Windows Explorer, you can click on each directory, check the properties and see which is using all the space - it's amazing!!

AWdrius

Try a little superb utility called CCleaner. It will remove all win update backups (do you remember when was the last time you rolled back any windows update?), temporary files for lots of apps, etc. A big saver for me.

Trust is a weakness.

Amarnath S

Yes - Windows Explorer is a great tool, and that's what told me that I have less space. Unfortunately, I need to visit each folder - subfolder - subsubfolder - ... to know where exactly space is being consumed; and that's what I needed a tool for...

Rocky Moore

Not sure if it is the same on XP, but on Vista and W7, the Windows/Winsxs directory can eat up some space. Anymore though, with drive storage so cheap (I just bought a 500 GB drive for around $60), I would not run less that 120GB for my primary C partition (mine is actually 133). There are too many temp things that get thrown in there and not deleted and also the parts of programs that get installed on C even though you install on another drive. Too cheap of cost for more storage to bother spending time trying to keep the size down :)

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Vikram A Punathambekar

Check your System Restore settings.

Cheers, Vikram. (Proud to have finally cracked a CCC!)

Vikram A Punathambekar

_Damian S_ wrote:

DO NOT DELETE THEM.....

I doubt he can, anyway. :suss: Unless, of course, he boots with a CD version of Linux or something.... [EDIT]That reminds me of the n00b (US Marine?) many years back who wanted to delete kernel32.dll :laugh: [/EDIT]

Cheers, Vikram. (Proud to have finally cracked a CCC!)

DaveAuld

Roger Wright wrote:

The swap file is on the root drive, by default, and it helps a lot to give it as much space as you can.

My understanding was if you have more than one drive on different channels then put the swap drive on a different drive to the system would give a performance advantage (albeit minimal) If a disk has been partioned to C:/D:/ etc, there is no benefit to be gained. clarity on channel bit: in the old master / slave ide arrangement no performance gain by having the drives on the same channel No Benefit Master : Drive 1 /OS Slave : Drive 2 / swap file Benefit Primary Master: Drive 1 / OS Secondary Master: Drive 2/ Swap file SATA - Benefit Channel 1: Drive 1 OS Channel 2: Drive 2 Swap file Thats why in days gone bay, i alway put a HDD and a CD/DVD on Primary and a HDD and CD/DVD Writer on Secondary, give you the performance boost on swap arrangement and improves CD/DVD direct copy without having to cache to HDD first. Dave

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