A hard drive filled itself up?

TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
edited June 2008 in Hardware
I just reformatted / reloaded xp to an old compaq pc, 666 Mhz P3 / 192 MB RAM with a 10 gb hard drive in it. It was working fine. Slow, but fine. 2 days later, the guy calls me and says the hard drive ssys it is full.

I went and looked at it today. The All Users folder (under Documents and Settings) says it has 6.47 GB worth of stuff in it. Yet when you add up the sizes of the 4 or 5 folders in it, it's less than 200 MB.

I went to do a disk defragment, and the analysis showed the hard drive as being mostly red (fragmented files).

WTF? Did the hard drive mess itself up?

Comments

  • PurplezArcticPurplezArctic
    edited June 2008
    I'm not exactly sure what is causing this problem.. But I don't think that the 6gb worth of data is actually there. Possibly the restore didn't actually wipe everything out from the previous OS installation, thus meaning that something is still thinking that the data off the hard drive before the format is still there.
    So if it only says that it's almost full, I'd ignore it. :D
  • beatzbeatz i am a hamburger Member
    edited June 2008
    Strange Problem, I am no Windows Pro, but:

    Did you check for hidden files by turning on "show hidden files..." and turning off "hide protected..." in Tools/Folder Options?

    It might be that the paging file is set too large, but since it's seems to be located in the "All users" - Directory, the space might be used by System Restore Cache or the Recycle Bin.

    Good Luck ...
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    I had done a full xp format on it during the wipe out / reload process. I don't think the paging file is larger than 512 MB. I also didn't do anything with hidden folder options or system restore options. Whatever the XP default state is is what they should be.

    The guy said he's just going to buy a new computer, but I was curious as to what the problem might be for future reference.
  • stoopidstoopid Albany, NY New
    edited June 2008
    Tim wrote:
    I also didn't do anything with hidden folder options or system restore options. Whatever the XP default state is is what they should be.

    The point in mentioning this was that if the hidden files and folders are not being 'shown' then you may have missed some of the files showing up under the documents and settings folders (meaning there could be 6GB of files, many of them marked as hidden and system files).

    You could also do a check disk to ensure the file tables don't have issues.

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265
  • thefadedlinethefadedline Manchester, England
    edited June 2008
    Hi Tim.

    I had a similar problem a few months back. Download the program (SequoiaView) and you should find the file(s) that's taking up your space.

    The thread about my similar problem is here: http://icrontic.com/forum/showthread.php?t=67607.

    Let me know if it helps you.
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