ScuzzyJo
asked on
Windows 7 Hard Drive Full
Hi
I'm hoping for a really quick answer to this as I need to get some work done and can't. I'm using Windows 7 and have semi-autonomous admin rights (it's a work machine and has been "optimised"). My hard drive is almost full and I even got to the stage of zero bytes free at some point.
The drive is 300GB and I've had a look at a number of folders to see what's causing the problem, but can't find anything. My Documents is 32 GB, Program Files is 10 GB, Progam Data is 4 GB and so on. I can't see enough, cumulatively, to figure out what's taking up all the space.
I've run chkdsk in Dos and it reparsed some EA files (whatever that means!), but it hasn't solved the problem. I have Sophos up and running (work's choice, not mine).
I'm at a loss! I don't know where else to look but it seems that something isn't right. Please can someone help me as quickly as possible?
Thanks
Sarah
I'm hoping for a really quick answer to this as I need to get some work done and can't. I'm using Windows 7 and have semi-autonomous admin rights (it's a work machine and has been "optimised"). My hard drive is almost full and I even got to the stage of zero bytes free at some point.
The drive is 300GB and I've had a look at a number of folders to see what's causing the problem, but can't find anything. My Documents is 32 GB, Program Files is 10 GB, Progam Data is 4 GB and so on. I can't see enough, cumulatively, to figure out what's taking up all the space.
I've run chkdsk in Dos and it reparsed some EA files (whatever that means!), but it hasn't solved the problem. I have Sophos up and running (work's choice, not mine).
I'm at a loss! I don't know where else to look but it seems that something isn't right. Please can someone help me as quickly as possible?
Thanks
Sarah
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Also, and I should have mentioned this: See if there is a Windows or Manufacturer back up routine running. Regular backups can chew up a lot of space. Tree Size may show it as hidden.
Go into the backup routine and see what it is trying to do.
If this is a Lenovo machine, they will set their backup to run.
Go into the backup routine and see what it is trying to do.
If this is a Lenovo machine, they will set their backup to run.
ASKER
This worked really well. When I'd looked at Program Files in Windows Explorer, it wasn't showing as being very big but TreeSize identified an old, unused SQL database that had been created with a previous version of SQL. The log file was over 130GB!! I deleted the database and the log file (after trying and being unable to open them in my current version of SQL and taking into account the fact that they hadn't been modified since March) and I how have 155GB free.
Look in c:\windows\temp and delete what you can in here.
Then run Windows Disk Cleanup and allow to find stuff to delete (be sure you check (select) the recycle bin) and let it delete.
Restart the computer and run Tree Size as suggested above. Get Tree Size from the source (Jam Software) and not a third party site. I use Tree Size Pro and it is excellent.
After you are done, run Windows Disk Defrag to clean up the disk.