Hard Drive Mayhem in XP Media Center

[arew264]

Hey. I just installed Norton Ghost like a week ago and I had 1/4 of my 148GB partition free then. I did a few backups while trying to get some DOS batch files to work that are supposed to copy the files to another computer after renaming them. I noticed that even after I deleted the backup files the hard drive still claimed it was almost full. I figured I could back it up one last time and then try to create a new partition to save the images on. I did not know why the hard drive was claiming it was just about full, but I thought it might be trying to backup the backup as it was making it (it was writing the backup file to the C drive, which it was backing up). I had that going overnight, and in the morning I found out that it had run out of space after running for 1 hour and seven minutes. The first backup I ran on there took about fourty minutes! I have no idea what ids doing this, but after that backup failed, I made sure that the folder I keep them in was empty and checked the free space, which turned out to be 56MB. I have no idea how that backup file could get so big because the first one was relatively small. I even had it on high compression! I know that nothing new has been installed, and I ran Norton Disk Doctor and later Windows CheckDisk and the free space went up to 3GB. I have no idea what is eating my hard drive. COuld someone please help me figure this out?

 

[arew264]

I just added up all the folders on the C partition that are in megabytes or gigabytes and it came out to about 40 gigs. I don't understand that at all. The files in C:\ are all less than one megabyte so I didn't count them. I should probably also mention that my hard drive has a C partition for the computer to run on and a D: partition for the HP Restore file. I still have no idea what's going on.

 

[Snowknight26]

Its probably a hidden log file, a hidden file, or something is corrupt. :x

 

[arew264]

Its probably a hidden log file, a hidden file, or something is corrupt. :x

Yes, that is possible and I thought at first it might be file fragments (thats why I ren disk doctor and chkdisk) However, I am still at a loss for what to do.

 

[vivid_vibe]

Do a search for abnormally large files on your computer. Run disk cleanup. If nothing suspicious shows up, download ccleaner. I've had that program remove 100mb in temp files before that disk cleanup didn't get. Plus it's just a nice little utility to keep around.

vivid

 

[arew264]

CCleaner found 332 MB and I'm searching for large files.

 

[arew264]

I only found one file slightly larger than one GB and it was something I want to keep. I don't know what to do next

 

[arew264]

Hey I'm kinda desperate here and I'll be on AIM (Aol Instant Messenger) for a while. My Screen name is arew264. PLEASE HELP ME!

 

[vivid_vibe]

Do a search on your computer for *.chk files. They can be deleted. Other than that, I'm afraid I'm out of ideas. Anyone else?

 

[arew264]

It found EBD.CHK twice in the windows folder, but I saw that they were 8kb so why bother deleting something that small?

I'm like about to start pulling my hair out because I don't want to have to format this comp. ANy other suggestions?

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

Close system restore could be a huge build up of restore points.


Damn microsoft its all their fault it is always their fault LOLOL j/k sick of seeing this all over the forums thats all

 

[Admiral Michael]

Close system restore could be a huge build up of restore points.


Damn microsoft its all their fault it is always their fault LOLOL j/k sick of seeing this all over the forums thats all

I agree, theres an option to delete all but the most current point in Disk Cleanup. Its under the More Options tab.

Or, if u dont use it you can disable system restore, its under System Properties > System Restore tab.