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Hard Disk Drive C problem!Comp expert needed!

Hardware, Software & Internet

Minitokyo » Forum » Computers & Internet Fora » Hardware, Software & Internet  Hard Disk Drive C problem!Comp expert needed!

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I just have this kind of problem recently. It's all about my Drive C which is always losing some free space whenever i'm surfing net, do some artworks at Photoshop CS2, and almost everything i do will cost the Drive C lose some free space. All my softwares were installed in the Drive C and somehow it keeps losing the free space in one point only left 1.00MB, all that i done is only try to create a wallpaper in P-CS2. So, only left the necessary softwares that i must have were in the Drive C and because of lack of spaces I had have to uninstall my Photoshop CS2 software to save some spaces. Even now when I'm browsing Mt itself, I kept losing some spaces too. But after i closed all the windows, the amount of free space was regained back on it's own and become normal back again(get back to the "real amount" of free space). I have no problem with my Drive D and Drive E, only Drive C give me a big HEADACHE!

If someone could help me with this, I will APPRECIATE all the helps that i could get! ^_^'

Thank you! XP

plain and simple time to get a new HD sorry :(

Must be becouse your drive C is the principal where your S.O. (that must be windows) is installed... You had try free delete the temporal files? or use the free drive's space with some software, for example, the soft that come with your S.O.? but... if you want a solution sure... in the most critical case, copy the importan files and format the drive... and try again install windows... I hope that you find a solution to your problem :)

Well it sounds like it is a software problem. It is possible I gess that the size of your catch got changed. Tho it isn't likely that simple. I'd recomend Formating.

First of all, delete the cache of Firefox and the temporary internet files of MSIE.
Now your problem is propably temporary files.
In Windows Explorer right click your C: HD...
Then hit DiskCleaning (or something like that), its right bellow the graphical representation of the disk usage. It will analyze the HD for files that can be removed or compressed.
By doing this you might save space.

Like i just ran the wizard myself and i have about 2GB of Temporary files that could be removed.

After this is done you should have a bit more disk space.
Now fire up photoshop cs2 and go to the settings.
Now set the scratch drive to another HD with a lott of free space.
This will speed up photoshop and cause your C: HD to lose less space.

Now another problem might be memory swapping.
Go to the Controll panel, Double click System
Go to the Advanced tab. The first part is 'Prestations'.
Go to the properties of that. A window should popup.
In that window go to the advanced tab.
Now you can see 'Virtual Memory'
Click the Modify button, And now make another HD then C is used for swapping.
This will also increase system performance significant. Considering that C is used for almost everything.
Now accept the new settings and go out of their.

Now lets go back to the explorer window and right click the C hd again.
In the Extra tab you have an option 'Disk Controll'. Hit both checkboxes in the dialog and hit OK.
You will likely need to reboot, if you do so don't be scared of the blue screen you will get.
Its Microsoft ScanDisk with a GUI :P

this should fix small partitioning errors on your C HD.
By now the data is propably cluttered. Defragmentating your HD never hurts.
Right click C: again and go to properties again.
In the extra tab you have an option to defragmentate your HD.
Its pretty self explaining. Do it and your system should speed up a bit.
And you likely get another few mb of space that wasn't writeable cause of cluttered data.

If all of this doesn't work, then get all the data of the HD immediatly.
And use the waranty service of it if possible.

Quote by nisnoopy3I just have this kind of problem recently. It's all about my Drive C which is always losing some free space whenever i'm surfing net, do some artworks at Photoshop CS2, and almost everything i do will cost the Drive C lose some free space. All my softwares were installed in the Drive C and somehow it keeps losing the free space in one point only left 1.00MB, all that i done is only try to create a wallpaper in P-CS2. So, only left the necessary softwares that i must have were in the Drive C and because of lack of spaces I had have to uninstall my Photoshop CS2 software to save some spaces. Even now when I'm browsing Mt itself, I kept losing some spaces too. But after i closed all the windows, the amount of free space was regained back on it's own and become normal back again(get back to the "real amount" of free space). I have no problem with my Drive D and Drive E, only Drive C give me a big HEADACHE!

If someone could help me with this, I will APPRECIATE all the helps that i could get! ^_^'

Thank you! XP

If you don't have much memory, disk space has to be used for virtual memory. The more memory you have, the less space will be used for that. Besides, get a new drive, some are quite cheap these days.

What is the manufacture's name on the hard drive?
What size is your C:\?
What O.S. are you using?
Do you have the latest Service Pack installed?

For Microsoft Window [XP]
Everytime you installed a new program, a system restore point will be created.
Clear out your system restore point and reduce the amount for your recycle bin.

System Restore uses 12% and the recycle bin used up 10% of your entire drive.

You can also run a diagnostic test on the drive to see if it's defective.
If it's under warranty, send it back and get a replacement.

Western Digital
Hitachi(IBM)
Maxtor
Seagate
Quantum
Fujitsu


Toshiba also makes hard drives, but there is not diagnostic utlities for it.

Quote by tiki223What is the manufacture's name on the hard drive?
What size is your C:\?
What O.S. are you using?
Do you have the latest Service Pack installed?

For Microsoft Window [XP]
Everytime you installed a new program, a system restore point will be created.
Clear out your system restore point and reduce the amount for your recycle bin.

System Restore uses 12% and the recycle bin used up 10% of your entire drive.

You can also run a diagnostic test on the drive to see if it's defective.
If it's under warranty, send it back and get a replacement.

Western Digital
Hitachi(IBM)
Maxtor
Seagate
Quantum
Fujistu

Toshiba also makes hard drives, but there is not diagnostic utlities for it.

Yeh I can actually help with this problem. There are a lot of tools in the Windows OS that could be of great help to you. Tiki223 has also suggested some very helpful ideas.

Have you accounted for all the space on your hard drive, I've lost 20 GB (250GB HD) on my drive that is specifically allocated to the system restore and the recycle bin.

My suggestions would be to empty your recycle bins (which is 10% of your drive), possibly reduce the space system restore has on your drive, defragment your drive (it won't help with your space problem, but is always a good idea), run the disc error check on C and delete your internet cache.

After you have tried that there is always the option offered by windows to compress files to save disc space.

Other then that have you consider upgrading to a new, and bigger, Hard drive. Your could have the new drive as a secondary drive and put your other non-system files on that, leaving your older drive as the primary/boot drive.

It's not a physical problem with the hard drive; if it was, you would have much bigger problems than a lack of space.

I would recommend using a program such as JDiskReport to find what is taking up large chunks of disk space.

Did anybody even mind to read what i posted?
Windows has something called scandisk.
I think the name is pretty self explaining.

First of all, THANKS to EVERYONE who did replying on my question. XD

Arigatou! :pacman:

Quote by ikki333Must be becouse your drive C is the principal where your S.O. (that must be windows) is installed... You had try free delete the temporal files? or use the free drive's space with some software, for example, the soft that come with your S.O.? but... if you want a solution sure... in the most critical case, copy the importan files and format the drive... and try again install windows... I hope that you find a solution to your problem :)

Yup! I used the free space to installed my P-CS2. ~_~

Yes, had tried to delete the temporal files every time i finish logging into net.

I can't make the decision to uninstall the Windows because the computer I'm using does not belong to me. It belongs to my relative and he was studying oversea at the moment. He too not very familiar with the computer stuffs just like i do. I'm sacred if i did something wrong with the hard disks or softwares.
But I would tell him about the solutions that you guys had suggested in this thread and absolutely this will helps more than no helps at all. Therefore, I am appreciate for all the efforts that were shown by everyone in this thread.

Thank you! ^^

Quote by bart416First of all, delete the cache of Firefox and the temporary internet files of MSIE.
Now your problem is probably temporary files.
In Windows Explorer right click your C: HD...
Then hit DiskCleaning (or something like that), its right bellow the graphical representation of the disk usage. It will analyze the HD for files that can be removed or compressed.
By doing this you might save space.

I'm sooo sorry to bart416 if my reply was a bit late because I still can't get through this problem to my relative. :sweat:

Ok, I always do the Disk Cleaning after i finish surfing the net and all that I've clean out was nothing! Simply there were nothing for me to clean out. Maybe because I'm using the "Express Cleanup" program from the Norton Systemworks software that i had it installed in the computer. Basically, it helps me to clean up everything.

Quote by bart416Now fire up photoshop cs2 and go to the settings.
Now set the scratch drive to another HD with a lott of free space.
This will speed up photoshop and cause your C: HD to lose less space.

Since, i had it to be uninstalled to save some space.. So, i don't have the P-CS2 install in the computer anymore.. -_-

Quote by bart416Now another problem might be memory swapping.
Go to the Controll panel, Double click System
Go to the Advanced tab. The first part is 'Prestations'.
Go to the properties of that. A window should popup.
In that window go to the advanced tab.
Now you can see 'Virtual Memory'
Click the Modify button, And now make another HD then C is used for swapping.
This will also increase system performance significant. Considering that C is used for almost everything.
Now accept the new settings and go out of their.

I'm not sure that this action would be helping or not and I'm too afraid that this action would cost the Drive C any problems that I can't handle. By the way, I'm currently need to use the computer and if could I would try not to make any modifications on them.

Quote by bart416Now lets go back to the explorer window and right click the C hd again.
In the Extra tab you have an option 'Disk Controll'. Hit both checkboxes in the dialog and hit OK.
You will likely need to reboot, if you do so don't be scared of the blue screen you will get.
Its Microsoft ScanDisk with a GUI :P

Haven't done this action either! :sweat:

Quote by bart416By now the data is propably cluttered. Defragmentating your HD never hurts.
Right click C: again and go to properties again.
In the extra tab you have an option to defragmentate your HD.
Its pretty self explaining. Do it and your system should speed up a bit.
And you likely get another few mb of space that wasn't writeable cause of cluttered data.

Yes, I done this but not very effective as it need at least 15% of the entire space to do it, and my currently available free space is only left 7%.

Quote by bart416If all of this doesn't work, then get all the data of the HD immediatly.And use the waranty service of it if possible.

If could resolve this matter in other ways, I would try not to use the warranty service as the service charge is quite expensive and I don't have any extra money to pay for it. Sigh.. OX

Quote by tiki223What is the manufacture's name on the hard drive?
What size is your C:\?
What O.S. are you using?
Do you have the latest Service Pack installed?

The manufacturer's name is Seagate and the size is 4.87gb. The O.S is Windows XP and I do not have the latest Service Pack installed. This is because the amount of space that it needed can't be supported by the Drive C. It lack of spaces..

Quote by tiki223For Microsoft Window [XP]
Everytime you installed a new program, a system restore point will be created.
Clear out your system restore point and reduce the amount for your recycle bin.

System Restore uses 12% and the recycle bin used up 10% of your entire drive.

You can also run a diagnostic test on the drive to see if it's defective.

I have nothing in my recycle bin and i have it empty everything that I had deleted so far. Yes, i did run a diagnostic test on the drive and the results were quite good. Nothing seem to be defective or does not function as normal.

Quote by tishdonAfter you have tried that there is always the option offered by windows to compress files to save disc space.

I'm doing this right now to the Drive C and it does work out a bit and save some of the space.

Quote by tishdonOther then that have you consider upgrading to a new, and bigger, Hard drive. Your could have the new drive as a secondary drive and put your other non-system files on that, leaving your older drive as the primary/boot drive.

As for the extra info, I do not have the extra money to upgrade it at the moment.. :(

Quote by Jim3535It's not a physical problem with the hard drive; if it was, you would have much bigger problems than a lack of space.

I was relieved to hear what you had written on my thread! >_<
Luckily, it's not a big problem! Fuh! :o

Quote by Jim3535I would recommend using a program such as JDiskReport to find what is taking up large chunks of disk space.

Haven't try it yet but I will later. Quite busy at the moment. ^_^'

Quote by bart416Did anybody even mind to read what i posted?
Windows has something called scandisk.
I think the name is pretty self explaining.

I'm sooo sorry bart416! :sweat:
I didn't mean for not replying to you as i'm quite busy at the moment. Suddenly, i have lots of work to do not like i'm abandoning everyone's posts in this thread.

Everyone, thanks in advance! :pacman:

  • GEE
  • 2y 17wk ago

If you have an old version of Firefox, you should upgrade it. Some old versions (I dont know wich ones) have a memory leak, decreasing free harddrive space while you use it.

Quote by GEEIf you have an old version of Firefox, you should upgrade it. Some old versions (I dont know wich ones) have a memory leak, decreasing free harddrive space while you use it.

Well, I don't have Firefox installed in my comp. I'm using Norton Internet Security software.

Quote by nisnoopy3The manufacturer's name is Seagate and the size is 4.87gb. The O.S is Windows XP and I do not have the latest Service Pack installed. This is because the amount of space that it needed can't be supported by the Drive C. It lack of spaces..

There is your answer. Your C:\ lacks space in the first place.
4.87GB is not enough for running Windows [XP] with or without service pack installed. Plus you've also got programs such as Adobe PhotoShop CS2 which takes up a lot of space as well.

Quote by nisnoopy3I have nothing in my recycle bin and i have it empty everything that I had deleted so far. Yes, i did run a diagnostic test on the drive and the results were quite good. Nothing seem to be defective or does not function as normal.

It does not matter if your recycle bin is empty or not.
Your HD will reserved 10% to your recycle bin and 12% for system restore, that's
22% reserved for the system.

There is nothing wrong with your computer. Who ever setup the system for you
is probably still living in the age of MS-DOS and Windows95 because they never took into consideration as to how much HD space Windows itself will up and reserved for itself. And how much HD space programs these days will use up.

Norton Internet Security uses up a ton of HD space also.

I stongly suggest you to repartition your HD, increase the space on the C:\ to at least 40gb, and reinstall Windows.

Here is a neat program that let's you see what you have in your HD and the amount it uses up. The program is still in its beta stages.

link

its space virus. im sure of it. scan for virus and see if im correct. i once had space virus and it took away my free space just like whats happening to yours. in the end i end up formating my HDD.

PS creates it's own page file in addition to the Windows page file. If your HD is not recovering all of the space once the program is closed, you may consider running a Check Disk (aka chkdsk). This will do a surface scan of the HD and recover data fragments. It is possible that you have files created on your HD that are recovered fragments of broken data. You can check for such files and delete them, they are usually named as File0001.CHK in the root of the drive.

Hey tiki223! :D
Thanks for replying on my thread! XD

Quote by tiki223There is your answer. Your C:\ lacks space in the first place.
4.87GB is not enough for running Windows [XP] with or without service pack installed. Plus you've also got programs such as Adobe PhotoShop CS2 which takes up a lot of space as well.

Well, I don't have the Photoshop CS2 software in any parts of my Hard Disks right now. As what did i written earlier, I had to removed/uninstalled it because it takes up too much space.

Quote by tiki223It does not matter if your recycle bin is empty or not.
Your HD will reserved 10% to your recycle bin and 12% for system restore, that's 22% reserved for the system.

Ok, this I get this one. ^_^'

Quote by tiki223There is nothing wrong with your computer. Who ever setup the system for you is probably still living in the age of MS-DOS and Windows95 because they never took into consideration as to how much HD space Windows itself will up and reserved for itself. And how much HD space programs these days will use up.

Yup! OX This computer was bought at least 6 years ago. He (my relative who owned this computer) had not thought of this kind of situation before when he bought this computer and me too! (for now) Sob.. sob.. TT_TT

Quote by tiki223Norton Internet Security uses up a ton of HD space also.

Mm.. I did installed the Norton Internet Security in my Drive D because as you did comment bout it, it takes some space too. I only installed the LiveUpdate on my Drive C which only takes up very little space.

Quote by tiki223I stongly suggest you to repartition your HD, increase the space on the C:\ to at least 40gb, and reinstall Windows.

Here is a neat program that let's you see what you have in your HD and the amount it uses up. The program is still in its beta stages.

link

Alright, i will browse this website in any moment from now on.


merged: 03-27-2006 ~ 10:19pm

Quote by Croixits space virus. im sure of it. scan for virus and see if im correct. i once had space virus and it took away my free space just like whats happening to yours. in the end i end up formating my HDD.

No such virus does exist in my computer because the last time i ran the full system scan was 4 days ago. Anyway, thanks for telling me bout the space virus. :p

merged: 03-27-2006 ~ 10:30pm

Quote by ZepphyrePS creates it's own page file in addition to the Windows page file. If your HD is not recovering all of the space once the program is closed, you may consider running a Check Disk (aka chkdsk). This will do a surface scan of the HD and recover data fragments. It is possible that you have files created on your HD that are recovered fragments of broken data. You can check for such files and delete them, they are usually named as File0001.CHK in the root of the drive.

Allright, I have the Check Disk done just recently and the results were quite good. Nothing seem to be wrong with my Hard Disks.

Thanks Zepphyre!

I was talking against other people who were talking about disk checking utilities nisnoopy3
So np, well one way to save the HD i gues, backup the files and format and reinstall windows.
That fixes most of the problems.

Quote by bart416I was talking against other people who were talking about disk checking utilities.

Chkdsk is great for basic diagnostic. Most HD manufactures will not care, if you use chkdsk or not. Most of them will require a diagnostic code. No diagnostic code, no RMA. Unless your HD can not be detected by any systems.

Load o' crap. Obviously these people havent used Adobe Photoshop CS. Theres this temp file created when you are doing a pic in photoshop, defaultly set in C:/temp/. Every time you open that ps image file, it creates a new image of it there for utility purposes and faster application speed of the CS2. Delete these files "manually" every few days if you are a constant user of photoshop. I had the same problem too but found the answer myself. If you dont want the temp file to be created in drive C: goto CS2's preferences>>plugins and there is the option of where you want the temp file to be created. About browsing the internet, get Firefox now. It's free and its awesome and it kicks IE in the butt. Set it's options to "empty cache folder every time it closes and max cache useage to around 50mb, that's what I use.

The temp file can take up a size from 2mb to 20gb. =0. see. That's why when you use PSCS2 it takes up a whole lotta disk memory. I remember that PS7 used to be much less intensive in this memory thing.

P.S. Photoshop only uses 239.39 mb of disk space. XD. IT doesn't take much space at all. It's the plugins and the temp file that take the sh*t to the fan.

What is the size of your D drive? How long ago was windows xp installed on your computer? I'm thinking it would be just safe to reinstall your OS software again and wipe the disk clean...it sounds kinda scary if you aren't computer sauvy, but it's pretty easy if you still have the disks it pretty much walks you through it all.

Quote by nanyaLoad o' crap. Obviously these people havent used Adobe Photoshop CS.

Er.. Well, I'm one of those too! ^_^'
I haven't used any Photoshop programs before and Photoshop CS2 is my first attempt. And I don't have it installed anymore.. :(

Quote by nanyaTheres this temp file created when you are doing a pic in photoshop, defaultly set in C:/temp/. Every time you open that ps image file, it creates a new image of it there for utility purposes and faster application speed of the CS2. Delete these files "manually" every few days if you are a constant user of photoshop. I had the same problem too but found the answer myself. If you dont want the temp file to be created in drive C: goto CS2's preferences>>plugins and there is the option of where you want the temp file to be created. About browsing the internet, get Firefox now. It's free and its awesome and it kicks IE in the butt. Set it's options to "empty cache folder every time it closes and max cache useage to around 50mb, that's what I use.

The temp file can take up a size from 2mb to 20gb. =0. see. That's why when you use PSCS2 it takes up a whole lotta disk memory. I remember that PS7 used to be much less intensive in this memory thing.

Thanks nanya for the advice! :D It surely helps a lot!

Quote by nanyaP.S. Photoshop only uses 239.39 mb of disk space. XD. IT doesn't take much space at all. It's the plugins and the temp file that take the sh*t to the fan.

Yup! I installed it in my Drive D and no problem with it but the most frustrating is the plugins and the temp files that take too much space and because of this, I had it removed from my computer. So, no more Photoshop CS2 install for a while until i resolved my Drive C problems.


merged: 04-02-2006 ~ 04:36pm

Quote by flukeWhat is the size of your D drive? How long ago was windows xp installed on your computer? I'm thinking it would be just safe to reinstall your OS software again and wipe the disk clean...it sounds kinda scary if you aren't computer sauvy, but it's pretty easy if you still have the disks it pretty much walks you through it all.

My D drive capacity is 19.5gb and my Windows Xp was installed probably 2 years ago.Well, it's kinda true that I have very little knowledge bout computer especially the hardwares and softwares stuff. Almost everything connect to computer i just knew little of them. Basically, I didn't do much things with computer just do the normal stuff like surfing net.

Ok, you said your C drive is only 4.7gb or something like that correct? That is the size of the disk and not the remaining space correct? If it is...there's your problem for sure...xp is installed on the wrong drive...or more or less...your partition of your harddrive is messed up. Winxp should be on the larger partition...tell me if you still have your windows xp disk, maybe someone can walk you through re-installing it or something...it definetly needs to be done, or you are going to continue to have problems. Sounds to me like your HD is actually like a 30gb drive total, I have a similiar setup on one of my older pc's except like I said...xp is running on the larger partition.

If you can and want to try it, before you try to reinstall your OS I would backup whatever important documents you have to a cd or dvd depending on if you have either available.

I didn't have time to go fully go through the other posts above.

Firstly, there are 2 reasons why this can happen:
1) Temporary files piling up.
2) HD virus attack causing you to lose ohysical HD space

This is most probably a TEMP folder problem. Most programs have temporary file automatic removers so your HD won't get clogged up with useless TEMP files from. Try to check if your programs have these options and use them. Follow the advices given by the others above, especially those who knows how to use Photoshop (i don't so they would know better, haha!).

What i would suggest is that you do a routine clean-up of your HD after you clear the temp files of the photoshop. I realise that the Windows XP system restore files takes up LOTS of HD space, sometimes up to 10gb if you leave it for 6 months. You can clear them by going to My Computer, right clickng on your problematic HD, then go to properties. Right under the pie chart of your HD space there's a button that says "Clean up.." then click on that. Go to the second tab of the new window and at the bottom, there's an option for you to clear your temporary system restore files without deleting the latest. Click on that button. Then click OK and it will clean up the rest of your useless temp files.

Secondly, i ASSUME you have and anti-virus installed in your system, so do a full scan to check for any viruses. Once that is done, you should either quarantine or delete any files that is virus-infected, depending on if those files are important and you're sure you can clear it of viruses (most of the time, this isn't feasible but it's possible). There is a virus that will eat up physical (not virtual) HD space, and if you happen to have this virus (you can check the property of the virus as most good antivirus programs will list the effects of viruses), you should do a back-up of the files that you want and aren't virus infected, then get a new HD. I really don't think this is your problem, so i really hope you don't have to do this because this is the last option that you should take.

You don't need to install any more defragmenting or disk-cleanup programs as the few that windows have is sufficient for casual users. I'm assuming again that you're not running a server or power workstation here. And i won't suggest totally reformatting your HD to resolve this problem. Most HD space problems can be easily handled.

Since you're using just 4.87gb on your prirmary HD for windows opreation (like i do, lol!), i suggest you install your non-windows programs on other partitions (like i do again! lol!). This will improve windows performance because windows will have sufficient page files to use on C:. Try HD space-intensive programs on other drives that has lots of space to spare.

I hope i'll be logging on more often to help you if you still have problems.

merged: 04-02-2006 ~ 05:03pm
*spam*

hoho, i just repeated what bart416 told you!

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