Phantom disk space disappearing

[DTS]

Phantom disk space disappearing

This is the same problem I had on my Win98SE machine (which I don't use any more), this is on a new XP machine.

I'll find I'm running out of disk space, delete about a gigabyte, only to find a few days later that a gigabyte has gone missing again, when I haven't downloaded as much as a gigabyte (certainly not without deleting most of it). So I delete another gigabyte, then days later another gigabyte has disappeared, again without having downloaded a gigabyte.

When this happened I started being careful how much I downloaded to make sure it would fit on my HD, so I am quite sure now that I haven't downloaded a gigabyte since I last deleted as much, yet the HD space has gone down by about a gigabyte.

What could be causing this?

I got Windows to check the disk for errors (with automatic repairs and that, so I had to restart the PC to have it done at startup), but the space is still missing.

What could it be that I did on my old PC that I've been doing on this one aswell that caused this?

Could it be some filesharing programs I used that don't free up HD space properly when files are deleted? (I checked the download folder.) I mean could it be a download buffer folder somewhere that has a lot of big files stored in it? I used WinMX and DAP on both machines. AFAIK WinMX doesn't use a buffer folder or anything whereas DAP uses a folder before the download finishes and it puts the file in the destination folder.

I had a program installed on my Win98SE machine that would show how much space each folder was taking up on the drive, and it didn't show up any buffer folder taking up a lot of space.

In the end on my Win98SE machine I used a Norton Utilites program to try to fix errors on the disk, which it warned could prevent the PC from booting again. It did fail and the PC wouldn't boot any more. There are no Norton products installed on this machine.

Also, could it be hackers using my PC in some way and hiding file storage?

I run Zone Alarm. Also AVG. I have Ad-Aware SE installed and run it sometimes. The last scan turned up nothing.

[creep]

Temp folders? Temp Intenet files? You make no mention of having cleaned these out.

"Filesharing programs".... uh yeah. I dunno what you're using but lot of these come with suspicious/malicious software.


Generally when someone brings me a PC with any type of P2P software on it and complains of and software issue, I start by removing that and any associated firewall rules, then check for virus and adware.

[+JuggerNaut+]

lol, hackers

download and run cc cleaner also to get rid of your temp crap.

[DTS]

I delete temporary internet files and run CCleaner all the time.

I said the filesharing program I used on both PCs, WinMX. Apparently it has no malicious software included with it, and I've run Ad-Aware SE and Spybot - Search and Destroy since having it installed so those would have found anything wouldn't they?

Edit: I do have a BitTorrent client, BitTornado, and another filesharing program installed, Shareaza, neither were installed on my Win98SE machine, though. A program that used the same filesharing network as Shareaza does (Gnutella) might have been installed on my Win98SE machine, though. I didn't usually use it though so I might have uninstalled it.

[creep]

Are you sure you aren't just running something that clears out your paging file and then windows is reclaiming it as necessary?

I mean you seem to be saying it stops at about 1GB "lost"...

[DTS]

Are you sure you aren't just running something that clears out your paging file and then windows is reclaiming it as necessary?

I mean you seem to be saying it stops at about 1GB "lost"...

No I'm not running anything like that.

I meant that I deleted about a Gb and all that was filled up again. I deleted maybe 2 Gb on my old PC before and that went aswell.
I think I might have freed up 2 Gb on this PC one of the times HD space was running low, I can't remember.

I don't really want to delete 2 Gb now to check if it happens again, or even 1 Gb, cause there's not much stuff on this PC. Well, there's quite a bit, but not so much that I can delete that much and have loads left.

Edit: I mean, it couldn't go beyond 1 Gb 'lost' cause the HD was almost out of space, I was getting the Windows "low disk space" warning.

[creep]

Well, I have no idea what's going on... but here's 3 things to consider.

Turn off system restore: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310405/en-us

There should be a hidden file called pagefile.sys in the root of your OS drive. Windows generally claims 1x-2x your RAM for virtual memory (if you have 1GB, it should start at 1GB, and expand to 2GB as needed)

MS recommends 15% free space on your drive for Windows to operate properly (Yeah I have no idea why either. But it's the truth.)

[DTS]

Why turn off System Restore? That might come in useful.

[Scourge]

Why turn off System Restore? That might come in useful.

You can set the amount of disk space it can use. It can easily get into several gigs if not controlled.

[DTS]

Why turn off System Restore? That might come in useful.

You can set the amount of disk space it can use. It can easily get into several gigs if not controlled.

Thanks. I halved it, but that didn't free up any disk space.

If you run out of disk space, System Restore becomes inactive. When you have made sufficient disk space available, System Restore is automatically activated, but all previous restore points are lost.

So all the restore points were deleted; maybe that's why it didn't free up space.

[DTS]

Strange, I have over a gig of free space now whereas yesterday I had about 200 Mb.
I checked the pagefile.sys and it's about the same size as before, so it's not that.

Wait, I had about 170 Mb free at one point, now I have 1.17 Gb free. Is it exactly a 1 Gb increase?

Could this be from the System Restore space saving? Does it require a restart to take effect?
That should have freed up 2 Gb though, not 1.

[Tormentius]

Could this be from the System Restore space saving? Does it require a restart to take effect?
That should have freed up 2 Gb though, not 1.

If you halved the amount of space it can use then that would stand to reason...

[DTS]

Could this be from the System Restore space saving? Does it require a restart to take effect?
That should have freed up 2 Gb though, not 1.

If you halved the amount of space it can use then that would stand to reason...

No, cause I halved it from 4 to 2.