Missing Hard Disc Space

The drive itself might be partitioned into 2 or more "virtual drives". When you look in Explorer, what letters other than "C:" do you see under the Computer Heading?

Edit, I read your post again. You say you have configured to a single drive.

When you right-click the drive and select properties, what does the pink and purple pie chart say?

Used space 194GB

Free space 38.6GB

Just as an addendum - I routinely empty the wastebasket as soon as I am sure I've finished with the file.

Just been trying a few things.  Uninstalled/deleted a few mini programs I hardly ever use, emptied the wastebasket afterwards, and would you believe that the free space actually FELL to 38.2GB?  Very strange.

Have you tried switching it off and on again.

Don't know about W7, but in XP to view hidden folders, go to tools, folder options, view, then enable view hidden folders.

Disc cleanup and defrag is always a good idea.

Already done all that.  I even forced a defrag although theoretically it shouldn't really be necessary as the fragmentation was only at 6%.  I've deleted the RESTORE points as well.  Just noticed that the reported used hard disc space is about twice what I expect from the properties of the files shown by Explorer.  Thought I might have a 'shadow' utility running somewhere keeping a full backup of all my files, although I have never knowingly installed such a thing.  Don't really know how I would check that. The laptop came preinstalled with Windows Vista, but I now have a pukka copy of Windows 7 running (not the upgrade version), and as I reformatted the hard disc before installing that, any original Acer software is no longer there.  I think the lack of hard disc space is slowing the machine down, which is more than a little annoying.

I suspect I'm either going to have to get a little man to change the hard drive for a larger capacity one, or get a new laptop.  I suppose a faster one with more than the current 4GB RAM might go faster with Audiogate, Audacity, and HDWriter (the software that came with our Panasonic HD camcorder)

I've always worked on the principle of not changing my computer until I find it can't do something which I want to do (or does it so slowly as to be irritating).  Just that I don't want something that's going to be noisy (fan noise mainly), as I run Asset on the laptop, and it lives in the same room as the NDS etcs. 

Two brilliant computers that optimise the use of disc space and are not prone to viruses ... So what made you downgrade to Windows?

Games, and other software. As I have said, whatever I have needs to run Asset, so Windoze it is.  If my RiscPC had better browsers and good video editing software I would probably still be using it.  Not really interested in having 2 different operating systems on the same machine.  I still have fond memories of the BBC B and Acorn Archimedes with a 'huge' 20MB hard drive.  

1. You don't need a 'little man' for a new disc - you need a screwdriver! Also, if you are willing to install a new disk and start from scratch, why not just reformat the existing one and start anew with it? Are you actually short of storage space, in the absolute?

2. Just adding more memory won't help you if your OS and apps are 32-bit. A 32-bit Windows can only support 4GB, of which some will be used by hardware. On the average, about 3.2GB will be available to you, your OS and your apps.

Fraser

Dungassin, I don't use Windows, not since XP if I can help it. I was interested in this problem so I had a Google of "windows 7 missing disc space". There are lots of results and it seem that it's a well known problem. I notice that in this post on a computer forum the problem was with windows media player making duplicate copies of album artwork from network shares. As you mentioned digitising albums I thought this may be relevant.

Hope it helps.

Always worth checking the obvious....when you say you have checked the contents of drive C: what did you use to check and did it pick up the pagefile and potentially the hibernate file which will be a significant size if you have max'd out on memory. The winsxs directory takes up a lot of space also did it pick this up. 

I always use "windirstat" to see where all my disc space has gone. It's usually tmp files somewhere.

64 bit Windows 7 home premium.  I may just reformat and start again, though that is a real hassle.  I do have some desire to get a new sooper dooper gaming laptop, though.  

Thanks. I'll check that out.

When my laptop has finished the long task it's currently running, I'nll download a copy and see what it says

In Control Panel,  Folder Options,  View tab... under 'Hiden files and folders' what's selected?  If 'Don't show...' is selected (has the blue full stop), then click 'Show hidden files...'  Also you could uncheck 'Hide empty drives' but that probably won't do much.

You'll then be seeing a lot more of what Windows has placed on your C drive.

Another (free) product that's very good at showing you file & folder sizes is WinNC - select the C drive and press F9. Then go to the largest folders and open them - sub folder sizes are shown... you can do this down to the file level - very very useful and informative.

But, hey, I agree - get a bigger drive - you can never have too much disk space!  (I speak from 40 years in the IT industry)

Roger

Revealing the hidden folders was the first thing I tried.  The figures were identical whether I showed them or not.  Thanks, anyway.  Just been thinking about when I bought this laptop, and it may well be that it's 4 or 5 years old rather than the 2 I originally thought.

Checked it.  Wasn't that.

Do you run CCleaner regularly? It's very good at finding temp files and other stuff you don't need.

It's one of the first bits of freeware a techie would normally install.

Don't have it.  Think I'll download and install it.

Incidentally, I have now freed up 112 GB of hard disc space, after running WinDirStat and finding that

windows/service profiles/networkservice/AppData/local/temp had that amount of crap in it.  The laptop seems to be running OK so the problem would seem to be solved.

Thanks for all the help.

Suppose I'll have to come up with another excuse to get that gaming laptop ...

I'm off to start another thread about how unreliable SDHC cards seem to be ...

Life is like that. Good to hear that you've sorted it.

Just wish I knew why something(s) suddenly decided to write and not remove >100gb of temporary files.  I'd checked less than a month ago and there was at least 100gb free on Drive C 

CCleaner now installed, and I shall run it every week or so.  Just have to RTFM to figure out how to stop it deleting the Cookies with my Amazon, Naim forums passwords etc in them.

What program is creating files in windows/service profiles/networkservice/AppData/local/temp  ?

Cleaning up the folder every week is a real pain

Rather than running WinDirStat - I run "Directory Report" in admin mode

Its faster and easier to use

Just had a look at that directory.  There was 12GB in it, which I took the opportunity to delete properly.  Before that I looked at the PROPERTIES of one of the files, and it doesn't tell me which program is doing it, so my answer is :

Dunno.  How do I find out which program is generating them?