My OSD shows 135Gig used. If I go through all the files listed in windows explorer , I cannot find even 20 Gig. What is using all the rest? I mean its like a 6 to 1 mismatch.

The reason I ask is because I might get an SSD. I have tons of simple storage capacity so what i want the SSD for is for speed from the OSD. You can get a 64 or 96 Gb SSD reasonable low prices but above 128 Gb they are expensive.

I just cannot find what is accounting for 85% of my supposedly used drive space.

Any ideas?

hidden files too? Explorer by default hids some files. check your default settings.

Also try to defrag it, see what defrag says.

In Explorer..click tools/folder options/view..click show hidden files, unclick hide o/s files. That will show what you can't see by default.

Show hidden files, folders and drives is already checked.

Its on an auto defrag schedule so it was defraged this morning at 1:45 AM. I ran the dfrag manually anyway and it took a few seconds with no changes to the used space number.

Very peculiar.

Show hidden files, folders and drives is already checked.

Its on an auto defrag schedule so it was defraged this morning at 1:45 AM. I ran the dfrag manually anyway and it took a few seconds with no changes to the used space number.

Very peculiar.

checkdisk repair

Checkdisk showed perfect frive, no errors bad sector etc.

Another puzzle. :)

check your system restore, that is the biggest culprit, turn it off clean it out then turn it on and make a new restore point. most of the time it will have multiple images of the os, if you are running vista or above you are looking at about 30gb or more so if you have multiple restore points, bango.

Yep , I think you hit the nail on the head. I have another external drive that i switched to for windows backup and that drive should be almost totally empty and the drive shows 117 Gb used. That drive I can see the backup/restore files size and its a total of 107Gb. Now for some reason the OSD does show me about 8 backup/restore folders but it will not show me the sizes. i assume they range from fairly small the day the system was first turned on to fairly large the day when I switch to an external backup drive.

So I think that solves the issue.

can I get rid of some of the backup files but keep some like the very first , when I added the USB 3 card and when I added the Blu Ray? those would be possible useful restore points but the rest could go but its not obvious how to delete single ones. If I shut off restore I lose them all I believe?

Thanks

correct on the lose statement, however, if the system is functioning ok today and you are ok with it, create one when you are done this should yield the same results.

Google & Download WinDirStat - Great application that will show what is taking up where. DO NOT DELETE ANYTHING from Windows\WINSXS if Win7 or Vista. Dumbassery by Micro$oft at its finest but don't delete.

Google & Download WinDirStat - Great application that will show what is taking up where. DO NOT DELETE ANYTHING from Windows\WINSXS if Win7 or Vista. Dumbassery by Micro$oft at its finest but don't delete.

I'll give it a try. thanks. yes , I am running Win7 64 bit so I will stay away from the WINSXS files.

I would really like to keep the very initial buckup before I added anything at all to the system. The other two restore points are just for convenience but that initial system backup on day one is worth having IMO.

Anyway , I will soon be switching over to total cloning of the drive on a schedule. That will leave a seperate dedicated drive with the entire system and then I can dump all the backups if I want. Amazing to me that after just buying this machine in March , there appears to be about214 Gb taken up by backups on the two drives total.

I suppose I can change some setting or just manually manage the backups. I have a $50 drive coming in that should b e better than the one that came from Dell. New drive is 6Gbs interface and 64 meg cache) that will become the new OSD and the original drive will go into the USB 3.0 HD docking station as a strickly cloned backup drive on some kind of Backup schedule.

What I would really like to eventually do is get the original system load back which I believe was like 30+Gb and then clone that ontp BD-R DL discs now and then. That way I just make the clone disc and stick it in a draw somewhare. Every month or so I do a new one and toss the old. Right now single layer BD's are 70 to 80 cents but the DL are still a little high. That will change soon I think as all the new BD burners are DL.

Anyway , fun and games with the computer! :)

If you dell has a system recovery partition, clone the drives and on the spare drive (KEEP ORIGINAL INTACT!!!) run the system recover from Dell and you'll have a clean factory fresh install.


I'll give it a try. thanks. yes , I am running Win7 64 bit so I will stay away from the WINSXS files.

I would really like to keep the very initial buckup before I added anything at all to the system. The other two restore points are just for convenience but that initial system backup on day one is worth having IMO.

Anyway , I will soon be switching over to total cloning of the drive on a schedule. That will leave a seperate dedicated drive with the entire system and then I can dump all the backups if I want. Amazing to me that after just buying this machine in March , there appears to be about214 Gb taken up by backups on the two drives total.

I suppose I can change some setting or just manually manage the backups. I have a $50 drive coming in that should b e better than the one that came from Dell. New drive is 6Gbs interface and 64 meg cache) that will become the new OSD and the original drive will go into the USB 3.0 HD docking station as a strickly cloned backup drive on some kind of Backup schedule.

What I would really like to eventually do is get the original system load back which I believe was like 30+Gb and then clone that ontp BD-R DL discs now and then. That way I just make the clone disc and stick it in a draw somewhare. Every month or so I do a new one and toss the old. Right now single layer BD's are 70 to 80 cents but the DL are still a little high. That will change soon I think as all the new BD burners are DL.

Anyway , fun and games with the computer! :)

Ok I downloaded and ran WinDirStat. It says only 47 Gb used on OSD which is in the ballpark of what I think is about right. Thats about 90 Gb less than when I right click the drive and left click properties. On the other drive which should be almost empty , it shows only like 9 Gb.

Now this windirstat program agrees with what I think should be on these drives. Why does windows properties say each has almost 100 Gb more? Is all that extra space used up in the formatting? They are both 1 T drives. Do you lose 100 Gb formating these newer 1 T drives?

Very weird.

WinDirStat shows a lot of unknown space. In the help there are FAQ's this says that unknowns are retsore points which it cannot read apparently because windows denies access to those spaces.

At some point I will get in and manually erase a lot of them.

maybe that's what that space is....

I reset everything and dumped about 150 Gb of old restore points and backups from 2 drives. I kept the original recovery files , I created a restore point and changed the backup schedule to just keep the most recent backup not accumulating them consecutively.

So I have a retore point , a recovery partition and both are backedup along with all data files on an external drive. The backup happens automatically every week. I also eliminated the backups on external drives I didn't even know where included in the backup schedule in the first place.

So now instead of like 137 Gb , my OSD has 35 Gig on it. That solves that problem and opens the possibility for a smallish SSD if Newegg is giving them away some day. Small ones, like 64 Gb are already being put on sale for less than $100 sometimes. I'll wait that out a bit as those prices are coming down fast.

Thank you everyone for the help!

So now instead of like 137 Gb , my OSD has 35 Gig on it. That solves that problem and opens the possibility for a smallish SSD if Newegg is giving them away some day. Small ones, like 64 Gb are already being put on sale for less than $100 sometimes. I'll wait that out a bit as those prices are coming down fast.

Thank you everyone for the help!

glad to see it worked, ccleaner is a nice free product that will work wonders you can edit a lot of stuff, check it out.

What I would really like is some sort of program that keeps an eye on the registry, Win.ini and Sys.ini.

It seems like a lot of programs get stuff into those files then keep creeping into the startup programs, changing toolbar defaults ( I use a united airlines search toolbar and earn more points on it than I do flying. Worth doing if you are a traveler) etc. I also sometimes try the shareware and almost always dump the ones with a fee after the 30 day trial. I know those leave crap in the registry, etc.

I used to maintain all those files manually using DOS but now a days I'm too timid to dig in like that.

Any good free Reg and .ini maintainance programs out there?

ccleaner has one in it, but u will need to run it. its very low intrusive being a manual program. i am not a fan of big brother software.
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I'll have to check it out. I have heard you need to be careful using CCClean as you can delete some important stuff if not careful

Got the new $50 64 mb cache drive. Stuck it into the HD docking station and Cloned it from the OSD. Put the newly cloned drive inside as sata boot drive and original into a drawer as my bomb proof, Murphy's law insurance, ultimate solution , just in case, Shyte happens system backup.

ran the test and the WEI did not budge from the 5.9 it had with the old drive as the weak link (everything else in system is 7.1 to 7.3) but by some miracle , the whole system is now running great. Internet is very fast , all apps are running faster start up is faster. No issues with magic jack start like the old one sometimes had. Really a big surprising bang for the buck. The new drive if anybody is shopping is a seagate Barracuda Green ST1500DL003 1.5 gig with 6 Gb/s interface and 64 Mb cach. I got it for $54 with no rebate and free shipping. Cloned easily using the Seagate/Acronis discwizard program.