Hard drive space information incorrect. Help!

[Neodr31]

I have recently got a new computer and installed Vista x64 home basic onto it. All was seemingly going well untill i looked in My Computer and saw that when i clicked on properties of the c drive it showed i was using 68GB of space. This was just days after i had the computer and i thought that couldnt be right....I only had Crysis and Battlefield 2142 installed aswell as a few other little programmes. I tallied up the size of all the folders in the C drive and it only came to just over 30GB. So why on earth has 68GB of space been used on my hard drive? Is this just the information being relayed incorectly by Vista, meaning i havnt actually used all that space? Or are things being installed twice on my system in a folder i cannot see? The space being used seems to fluctuate dramatically too. For example i can check and it'll show 68.8 GB being used, then i will check 10 minutes later and its at 70.2 GB without me having installed anything new.

Any help would be apreciated guys. Is there any other way to check the actual space being used on my hard drive? Is this a known problem? Thanks for your time guys.

 

[Bruce]

Where's All My Disk Space Going? (Vista) - Notebook Forums and Laptop Discussion

 

[KSoD]

Lets see everytime you go to a website you get files that are cached on your C:\ drive. So depeding how much you surf you can have a GB or 2 there. Then you have your system restore, hibernation files and other such things.

So yeah it is possible to show 68GB being used cause with everything on by default you have that much space being wasted. Get CCleaner and run it. See how much space you can clear up from Temp files from applicaiton installs and your Internet temp files. I have had that up to 6GB easily before.

 

[Bruce]

I think it's the shadow copy thats causing it. 15% of HD space is pretty big

 

[KSoD]

Yeah Shadow copying would be the major source of it. Since i have System REstore off and Hibernation turned off for myself i never even bothered to look toward Shadow Volumes...

 

[Bruce]

Yeah I always shut that stuff off in xp too

 

[12x12]

Hi,

I essentially have the same problem. My computer shows 25GB of free space (out of total 70GB). That means 45GB used.
Run a check in C Drive by selecting all folders and opening up properties... It says it's only using 17GB.

I have 28 GB missing!! I ran CCleaner and was not able to restore anything more than 3 GB.

I wonder it has anything to do with repeated installing and uninstalling... I have been doing a ton of that lately. The last time I did that, I found out that I lost 0.4GB.

Any advice is most helpful. Thanks!

 

[peterhuang913]

Disk cleanup?

 

[Osiris]

Was there a previous windows install on here? If so, delete the old installation and you wil gave a lot of space back.