Free space on drive changing irregularly

bandit_oo1 · 04-14-2009, 03:01 PM

Hi Everyone!

I am new to this forum so I just wanted to say hello. I hope this does not sound like a dumb question, but I noticed some strange behavior after a recent install of Vista home premium/SP1. I am running two Western Digital 300 gig 10,000 rpm veloceraptors in a raid0, not on a seperate controller card, just off the main motherboard(DFI P35 Lanparty). I try to keep this drive/volume as bare bones as possible for maximum performance for Flight Simulator X. I did not partition the drive/volume, I installed Vista directly on the unallocated space and added the raid driver befor installing.

My question is this....every day or two when I check local drive C(the only drive), the amount of free space is fluxuating dramatically. Example...Day 1... 420GB free of 558GB...Day 3...423GB free of 558, then on Day 5 it jumped to 448GB free of 558! I have not added or removed any files/programs/downloads/uploads or anything! I can understand some small variation, but not 25GB of space! Is it possible that Vista is not reading the drive correctly? I do run Disk keeper Pro 2008 with invisitask to keep defragmented...can this be a factor? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. The system is very fast and does not seem to be affected by this, I am just at a loss for how the free drive space can fluxuate this much. Thank you once again, and thank you for your time!

**raptor_pa** · 04-14-2009, 05:44 PM

Defragging shouldn't make any real change in disk space. Check your settings for system restore. A couple of things that can cause variance - allowing windows to control page file space, using hibernate, system restore points - particularly if you are deleting a lot of files. System restore will delete restore points when either they are too old, or whenever the allotted drive space for storing restore points gets maxed out. Also temporary internet files, and the user temp directory could have an effect. Not too likely that Vista is misreading the drive, it calculates based on what it's seeing in the MFT and directory structure. One thing you could do though it might take a few minutes each day, is walk through checking the properties of the root level folders and establish a baseline of how much space each root folder occupies. Check that once a day and see which root folder shows the variance when you see the larger variances. Once you identify the root level folder, you might need to spend a couple more days drilling down through the subfolders in that one to find where the roblem actually exists.

**raptor_pa** · 04-15-2009, 09:32 AM

Glad to be of help, please keep us posted on what you find

bandit_oo1 · 04-15-2009, 09:36 AM

Thanks raptor...checking the root folders is a great idea! Thanks for the help!

04-14-2009, 03:01 PM	#1 (permalink)
bandit_oo1 Registered User Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 2 OS: Vista home,sp1	Free space on drive changing irregularly Hi Everyone! I am new to this forum so I just wanted to say hello. I hope this does not sound like a dumb question, but I noticed some strange behavior after a recent install of Vista home premium/SP1. I am running two Western Digital 300 gig 10,000 rpm veloceraptors in a raid0, not on a seperate controller card, just off the main motherboard(DFI P35 Lanparty). I try to keep this drive/volume as bare bones as possible for maximum performance for Flight Simulator X. I did not partition the drive/volume, I installed Vista directly on the unallocated space and added the raid driver befor installing. My question is this....every day or two when I check local drive C(the only drive), the amount of free space is fluxuating dramatically. Example...Day 1... 420GB free of 558GB...Day 3...423GB free of 558, then on Day 5 it jumped to 448GB free of 558! I have not added or removed any files/programs/downloads/uploads or anything! I can understand some small variation, but not 25GB of space! Is it possible that Vista is not reading the drive correctly? I do run Disk keeper Pro 2008 with invisitask to keep defragmented...can this be a factor? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. The system is very fast and does not seem to be affected by this, I am just at a loss for how the free drive space can fluxuate this much. Thank you once again, and thank you for your time! Last edited by bandit_oo1; 04-14-2009 at 03:08 PM.

04-14-2009, 05:44 PM	#2 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,931 OS: XP	Re: Free space on drive changing irregularly Defragging shouldn't make any real change in disk space. Check your settings for system restore. A couple of things that can cause variance - allowing windows to control page file space, using hibernate, system restore points - particularly if you are deleting a lot of files. System restore will delete restore points when either they are too old, or whenever the allotted drive space for storing restore points gets maxed out. Also temporary internet files, and the user temp directory could have an effect. Not too likely that Vista is misreading the drive, it calculates based on what it's seeing in the MFT and directory structure. One thing you could do though it might take a few minutes each day, is walk through checking the properties of the root level folders and establish a baseline of how much space each root folder occupies. Check that once a day and see which root folder shows the variance when you see the larger variances. Once you identify the root level folder, you might need to spend a couple more days drilling down through the subfolders in that one to find where the roblem actually exists. __________________

04-15-2009, 09:32 AM	#3 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,931 OS: XP	Re: Free space on drive changing irregularly Glad to be of help, please keep us posted on what you find __________________

04-15-2009, 09:36 AM	#4 (permalink)
bandit_oo1 Registered User Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 2 OS: Vista home,sp1	Re: Free space on drive changing irregularly Thanks raptor...checking the root folders is a great idea! Thanks for the help!