Topic: This dumb ass needs some help!

[nedstruzz]

OK so I've got a PC with a 100 gig internal hard drive.  I have about 10 gigs worth of audio and 10 gigs worth of programs on the computer but only 9 gigs of space left on the drive.  I've defragmented, I've compressed but still only 9 gigs of space left. 

What can I do to free up some space on this sucker besides re-format the drive? 

Any help is greatly appreciated cause I am strugglin with this thing!!

Thanks in advance!

Ned

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

Try this:

1. Right Click on My Computer
2. Choose Manage from the window that pops up
3. Choose Disk Management from the left side of that window

You hard drive should be in there. Check to see if there is any unpartitioned space. If so, format it by Right Clicking and choosing Format... on the unformated area on the "map" of the drive.

Otherwise, if you have an older computer you may need to install some software to trick the computer into allowing it to see the entire drive.

Another option is to update your BIOS, which can be a little much if you're not a computer person. It's easy, but there is the possibility of really screwing up your computer (it won't start if you screw it up).

[nedstruzz]

Looks like its all one partition.

I am searching the whole computer and cannot find where all this space is being used up.  Very strange.

[anonymous_user]

One thing you can always try is doing a Windows Explorer search for files over 50mb. That will let you see all the biggest files on your hard drive. You can use any amount, like 20, or 100. Given what you've said though, don't go deleting any files, because you can cause serious problems. If there are files that you suspect you might not need, then make sure to double and triple check it with experienced or knowledgeable users first before touching any of them.

[datbrad]

I have also seen recycle bin errors when after deleting files, the root directories are gone, but the space on the drive is still showing the same used amount. Then after a couple of random restarts, they clear up. But sometimes, you have to backup and reformat. PCs are just weird as shit.

[Brian Skalinder]

A few things to consider...

If you haven't already, open Windows Explorer and main menu Tools | Folder Options | View, select the Show Hidden Files radio button and untick the Hide protected operating system files checkbox.  Then go back and look to see where the big files are.  Some may be in c:\, namely hibernation files (hiberfil.sys) and / or virtual memory (pagefile.sys).  These should not account for all the seemingly unavailable space, but it's possible they account for a good chunk of it.

Re virtual memory, verify Windows doesn't have your virtual memory set to some ludicrous size.  It's happened to me before - it just kept growing, and growing, and growing...  Settings | Control Panel | System applet, Advanced tab.  In the Performance section, press the Settings button, navigate to the Advanced tab, and in the Virtual Memory section, press the Change button.  Make sure the Paging File Size is reasonable, say...1x or 1.5x your RAM for starters.

Maybe install a freeware app that will search the entire drive and show you the size of each individual directory.  Maybe the directories are hidden (and the first comment above should help with that), maybe you're just missing it if it's a PITA to manually check every one.

Just guesses at this point.  Can you show us a screenshot of the drive in Computer Management | Disk Manager?

[live2496]

It sounds like your limit is 32gb(?) If so this is a FAT32 formatting limitation imposed by Microsoft.

From Wikipedia...
"Windows 2000 and Windows XP can read and write to FAT32 file systems of any size, but the format program included in Windows 2000 and higher can only create FAT32 file systems of 32 GB or less. This limitation is by design and according to Microsoft was imposed because many tasks on a very large FAT32 file system become slow and inefficient. This limitation can be bypassed by using third-party formatting utilities or by using the built-in FORMAT.EXE command-line utility."
<snip>

Hmmm... I have not tried the command line utility for this, as they mention,... but WinME, Win98, Win95B do not have this limitation. So if you can bootup from one of those OS's the format.exe utility should format a disc up to 2TB (or 8TB if you use 2k clusters)
 
You are going to have to reformat unless you want to have multiple 32gb partitions. Which you can do by doing what Mike B suggested.

edit: I just had to do this myself. XP format utility will not do this. You can download this third party tool for formatting FAT32. It's called FAT32FORMAT.EXE. http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

Otherwise you can use NTFS, but it can only be accessed from Windows. FAT32 is more cross-platform OS friendly.
You could use the Win98 format utility, but apparently there could be issues with USB 2. The web page link explains this.

edit: if you want to format with 64k clusters the command would be...
fat32format.exe -c128 <d:>  where <d:> is the drive letter.

[nedstruzz]

Well after quite a few days of reading on how to reformat or wipe a hard drive I found how to search all Temp files *.tmp.  While my temp file folder showed no files I had 80 gigs of Audition session files when I searched *.tmp.  I deleted all files and now have 80 gigs on the drive. 

Thanks everyone for your help!!

[rastasean]

Well after quite a few days of reading on how to reformat or wipe a hard drive I found how to search all Temp files *.tmp.  While my temp file folder showed no files I had 80 gigs of Audition session files when I searched *.tmp.  I deleted all files and now have 80 gigs on the drive. 

Thanks everyone for your help!!

HOLY CRAP. 80 gigs in temp files. That is impressive.
Now you and your machine can breathe a little easier.