Enterprisingguy

I have a friend who bought his son a new PC for Christmas. He has very little on it. He uses it mainly for online gaming. While checking on the system resources he noticed that 77 gig were used. So he looked at all the programs and other files and could only come up with what totaled about 20 gig. He asked me to ask the forum if anyone has any idea what would cause this and if he has overlooked anything that would account for the extra space used. Thanks for any insight!

bhahar84

Hi Enterprisingguy!!

So, you're saying that the pc only using up 20GB of data, and it shows that 77GB of precious space has been used, am I right?

Before I guess something, can I know how many partition drive his computer have? Is it only one, or more than that? And how did he summarize that only 20GB of data has been used by his computer?

Just to clarify everything, ask him to go inside each partition and see how many free space left form the total, so the data used should be equal to difference between both.

Space used = Total space - Free Space

And then, ask him to select all the folder inside the partition, then right click on any folders after select, and click Properties. By now, he should get the total space consumed by all the files. If the space consumed is same like the space used, then there is nothing to worry about. But, in case the size is not matching, there is a problem.



You might want to try click on menu under any folder windows, Tools, Folder Options. Then, you should be on General tab, click on View tab. Choose the "Show hidden files" and remove checkmark from "Hide protected operating system folders and files" and then click OK.






By now, you should be able to see all the hidden folders and files. Ask him what is the size of page file (should be the file named pagefile.sys), and also the size of "System Volume Information". If total of this size sums up to the space used size, then it is correct





You can try to delete all the files inside folder System Volume Information,but make sure you didn't delete the folder itself. You can use a software Unlocker (Download Unlocker) for this purpose because this folder is protected by system.

Make sure you have created the system restore point before perfoming any action in case there is anything goes wrong








You might also found some unknown folder or files which takes out of some large space. Maybe this can be deleted safely, but I hardly recommend you to post the screenshot and details of files/folder here first before going ahead and delete them







Hope this helps

Enterprisingguy

Thanks bhahar84!

That was very helpful.. I passed this info onto my friend and I will let you know the results. This was more info than I was expecting. I even learned a few things! I appreciate the amount of time it must have taken you to put it together!

I have encouraged my friend you join the forum. I told him that there is no need to be intimidated here. I was at first, but everyone here has been very patient and professional!

bhahar84

Thanks for the appreciation Enterprisingguy

Just being here to help

Try to tell ur friend maybe he want to give it a try join this site. Once he joined the site, maybe he won't leave it forever then,hihi

kyebean

I had the same problem, I suggest you use NTFS Active@ Boot Disk. This is an unbelievable resource for almost any Windows problem. I have had all kinds of PC problems, and it has been the most valuable, with ZoneAlarm Internet Security a close second. For me, a previous HP Recovery had put my old desktop (including huge media files) into C:\USERDATA which was inaccessible with about ten different previous applications that I tried.

Enterprisingguy

Thanks for the tip Kyebean! Could you provide me with a link to this resource? It sounds like something I should have. I already have ZoneAlarm and you are correct...it's great!

Bez

You could also use a program like WinDirStat to help find large files and find out what takes up most space on your disk.

It's free here --> WinDirStat

kyebean

Just go to NTFS.com
Active@ Boot Disk isn't like most boot disks, which I've generally found to be archaic and unhelpful. It's built on Windows PE 2 which is the latest version of the "OS" that many professionals and system builders use to setup and troubleshoot their systems. Windows PE can be hard to get for a consumer. Active@ Boot Disk also incorporates a web browser, password changer and many other insanely helpful tools, all in about 300 MB (half a CD).