Maintenance :: Windows 8 Is Taking Up A Lot Of Hard Drive
Mar 7, 2013
My 60 GB C: drive ran out of room. The only thing installed on it is Windows 8 and whatever pre-installed programs came with my computer. I ran WinDirStat (WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics), a directory statistic tool and found two very large folders: C:/Windows is 22.2 GB and C:/ProgramData/Microsoft is 17.2 GB. This doesn't seem right. Can I free up room in these or are they both necessary? I read that windows 8 should take up around 20 GB, not 40 so how might I got about freeing up some space?
Also, I updated from Windows 7 about two months ago.
I just installed Windows 8.1 on my system (from Windows 8) and had to restore to an earlier time (to one from earlier today). The issue is that my solid state hard drive was reduced by about 20 Gigs! I even deleted the other restore points and rebooted, but my hard drive has about 136 gigs of space. Before the restore, it was 156.
Does windows restore really eat up this much hard drive space? Is there a way to get it back?
I have a Toshiba Satellite hybrid, with Windows 8, 4GB RAM and 128 SSD hard drive. I have full Microsoft office and very few other programs, there are the Toshiba installed software which I don't use and the windows 8 based 'apps' which I also hardly use.
My 128GB was about 70% full from week one, but now it is almost 100% full, I regularly carry out disk clean up, but I unable to get more than 1GB free on my hard drive, can this be right? How can I resolve this?
I've been using Windows 8 CP for about 3 months now, and I'm a bit shocked that my 100Gb partition is almost full. Take note that I have a separate partition for multimedia files other than for OS. I'm also running Win7 on a separate drive and so far it has only taken up around 40+Gb in a span of a little over a year. So I wonder, does Windows 8 really take up that much space really fast? is it normal? I've already done cleaning up the disk, deleted unused update files, deleted as much trash files I could find.. But still, all I could free is <10gb of space.
Is there any other way I could free more space? Is there something wrong with my Windows 8? Or is it really normal that it takes up space that fast?
I found a partition tool which allows you to allot free space from one partition to another, but I'm not yet sure whether to use it or not. I guess I just need to hear other people's opinion first.
I"ve installed windows 8.1 from fresh on a seperate parition on my macbook pro retina 2013 via Apple's bootcamp.
I allocated 40GB which when formatted is 37GB
But now I'm downloading Call of duty on steam which is 14GB however on my hard drive apparently I've only got 5GB left..
Is there a way to free up space or to see what on earth is taking up soo much space..
Ideally I want to buy Battlefield 4 on origin soon but that needs 30 GB space, obviously I'll delete the call of duty game but how can I get all my space back.
I bought a new Sony Vaio laptop with Windows 8 pre-installed couple months ago; and all I have done since was installing just the MS Office and the Antivirus softwares. Now for no apparent reasons it shows the hard drive is full and I can not do anything with it. I've tried to create a system recovery with an USB flash drive, but it won't let me do it either.
I have two cards, a class 6 and a class 10. The problem is not reproducible on my laptop, which transfers around 8mg/sec.
I've had intermittent problems since upgrading. At first i was getting what i consider a normal transfer rate of 8-10 mg/sec with each card. But several weeks ago I began experiencing rates of UNDER 1 mg/sec. That is KILObytes. It takes an hour to transfer my photographs, which is amazingly not ok.
I have a standard HP set-up, basic computer model, AMD Phenom 8450 Triple-Core 2.1 GHz
I've noticed that when i turn the indexing off, the transfer rate rebounds to normal. But then i have to turn it back on and reboot before either I or a program can locate a file.
Which is also amazingly not ok.
I've tried everything i can think of short of a clean reinstall. Which i REALLY would like to avoid. I've already done that twice since upgrading in November.
I just installed Windows 8. I used to have Vista. With Vista I could connect my Seagate external hard drive and then find the Backup function and create a backup. How would I do this with Windows 8?
I was wondering what you'd recommend for the following:
I want a program that synchronizes my files with my external hard drive.
The client I use right now, Memeo Instant Backup, is decent, but has the following issues:
1. Takes a lot of resources to run 2. Is extremely slow 3. Doesn't mirror deleting files on my hard drive, keeps them on my external and causes it to get full
Is there a program I can use that just literally copies my user folder onto an external drive, and as I delete/move files on my hard drive, its mirrored on the external hard drive?
About 1-2 weeks ago, I had 15GB of space left on my SSD that is solely committed to OS and drivers. Today, I have 2.9GB left. I have downloaded nothing, and I have changed nothing. take a closer look at why my SSD space is disappearing? I've had this OS for 2 months now and it wasn't a problem until recently.
I have a server with Windows 8 on a 360gb sata drive with 4 1.5TB drives as storage, which i had joined under Windows 8 to be seen as one drive. The system had been sluggish lately so was going to replace the 360gb with a ssd which i had used b4 on my laptop, so when i had it connected and started to install.
I seen 5.8 drive and ssd 12ogb drive and a few small partitions i deleted main partition on ssd and few other small partition which i thought was on the SSD but one was related to the storage drives and they are all screwed up now and when i connect the original Windows 8 os hard drive it doesn't boot anymore.
My question is whats the best way to proceed to save all the data on the hard drives nothing was formatted on theses drives.
8.1 installed on SSD, Easeus backup doesn't see my HDD any more, so I can't make an image of it. It only sees the C drive and my external hard drive, but not the internal HDD (Hitachi 500 GB) that I use as a second drive for storing personal data. I tried with Macrium Reflect, and same problem.
Recently i upgraded my system to windows 8..N after clean install i backed up the copy of my C drive (Includes System Image) to my external 2TB Hard Drive.. It took around 250GB of hard drive space..Now since i am running out of space i decided to delete the back up copy from My hard drive.. I deleted WindowsImageBackup and all associated files using control panel..But around 150GB space is missing(not visible) from my external Hard Drive..
As You can see from attached pic that 125 GB free out of 1.81TB..But size of all files including hidden files is 1.53TB..
I created some windows 8 system images(Using the internal system image tool). Now I find restore points more useful, but I would have to turn the system protection on for an external hard drive. The problem is that I don't understand the sophisticated message Using system protection on a drive that contains system image backups will cause other shadow copies to be deleted faster than normal. Does it mean, that under some circumstances my manually created full system images could be deleted to create a restore point? I would like to keep the system images. Also, I hope it doesn't override existing directories on this harddrive, but I don't want to try it out without being sure.
I am creating a Windows 8 recovery drive on a new 16GB flash drive (The only option with my new refurbished Gateway NE56R49u Laptop). The process has been running approximately 5 hours now with the green progress bar being only 1/32 inch from complete for approximately 4 hours. Should I click the "cancel" tab and/or the "red X" to close the program? If I do, will I be able to start the process again? This just seems like an extremely long time to complete such a small portion (1/32 inch on the progress bar) of the process.
But the problem is, the windows explorer is taking up 20% CPU all time even peaks to 25-30%. when i go to taskmanager and press end-task(windows explorer) the laptops stops making the loud fan-noises and also the CPU usage is back to normal
(i hope the language in the screenshots are no problem) common terms are: beschikbaar = avaible, geheugen = memory, snelheid = speed, in gebruik = usage,
SOLVED: 1) Open C:Windows/Temp 2) Delete all the data 3) Open task manager 4) Terminate explorer.exe 5) Start a new explorer.exe 6) Problem solved.
As you can see from the picture, Windows Explorer is taking too much RAM memory and it is slowing down my computer. I am fighting with this for 3 days with no victory.
So a a day ago I woke up, turned on my computer, and was surprised at how long it took to turn on. It took, like, 30 minutes to get to the desktop screen (I have Pokki so it goes to metro for a seconds and then automatically goes to the desktop).
It took its sweet time trying to load steam and I ended up cancelling the load. Nothing loaded except for Launchy, not even the Pokki start button. I was surprised so I turned it on again and it kept going slower each time; I shouldn't have kept restarting, but I was stupid.
Anyways, I left the house and when I got home I restarted it twice before I decided to just let everything load. I was able to close the Steam startup, something I'd been trying to do for some time, but the computer had booted so slowly and the computer had lagged so badly I'd not been able to. I couldn't even open the task manager because when I moved the mouse down to make the taskbar popup it would lag. When I right-clicked it would take a minute or two to open the box and when I clicked on "task manager" it wouldn't open because the program would time out. There would be a Microsoft error pop-up box when it timed out. When I would get it to open it would take a long ass time to load and it crashed a few times.
Anyways, I decided to just let it load, it took 2-3.5 hours to open everything. I opened Advanced System Care Ultimate and ran a virus check and then I went to sleep, when I woke up it said that the check (a full scan) had run for 8 hours and there were no problems according to the program.
Things were still kinda laggy, but the speed of the computer was the same it had been when it as first laggy. So, unusable laggy, but not as bad as it had gotten. Also, it said that Windows 8 hadn't been activated and when I tried to activate it Windows said it couldn't activate it at the time.
The message left (after being there the whole night), but things were still laggy (oh and this is not the first time I have installed Windows 8 so during the night I also left it to delete the old windows.old folders, it would say that it kept finding new items. So, even the deletion of things was sloowwww). I turned on Skype and even though the internet was connected it didn't connect. I turned on the troubleshooter, but it would time-out. I opened Google Chrome and it actually opened! When that happened Skype started to work and, even though things were still laggy, I thought things were getting better. I saw a video.
I left the house, but I left everything on as Advanced System Care Ultimate checked for malware (after having run the antivirus check the previous night). When I got home the internet didn't work, but the computer was almost as fast as it was before (its got 4 years, and it recently fell, but there hadn't been any problems until that day. ACTUALLY, I don't know if this started before or after it fell, it wasn't from a high place, but the loading screen had been lagging for some time).
I ran the troubleshooter and it worked this time, it said that the Diagnostics Policy wasn't working. So, the internet stopped working in the 8-9 hours I was gone. Pokki still hadn't loaded, I went to PC settings and I tried to change the Lock Screen for no reason and it didn't work. I tried changing the account picture and that didn't work either. I'm at a loss, not sure whats happening to my computer, but its almost as fast as it once was.
I'm writing here with my Desktop, as my Laptop is completely useless right now.
The Problem: Windows Explorer hogs up CPU up until it crashes (15 - 30 seconds after). I cannot recall anything I might have done to change the laptop; it just happenned overnight.
OSystem: Windows 8 Laptop
HijackThis Report:
Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.5Scan saved at 12:40:59 PM, on 2013-11-29 Platform: Unknown Windows (WinNT 6.02.1008) MSIE: Internet Explorer v10.0 (10.00.9200.16537) Boot mode: Normal
[Code] ....
I'm ready to try anything, as long as its not "just reformat"; I cannot reformat - too much stuff in there.
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4500U CPU @ 1.80GHz 8Gb Ram 1Tb harddrive
but sometime system.exe takes up as much as 80% of the CPU. and it does causes the mouse pointer to stutter/ hangs. Even-though Power plan is set as "High performance"
There are these files with filenames beginning and ending with curly braces taking up too much space in my SSD main OS drive. They are located in the 'C:Windows' directory. Does they are safe to delete? I suspect something bad (virus perhaps), but I don't know. There are other files like these, as shown in the screenshot below, but they don't take up as much space as these recent ones. Are they needed by the system? Are they from a bad program?
My PC boots up in 10-15 seconds, but then it sits at my desktop with everything functional for about 10-15 minutes before my startup items (Battle.net, Spotify, DNSCrypt, etc.) actually start loading up. Even after the items have loaded up, Windows Update continues to tell me that the service is not loaded and that I should reboot. I have downloaded the .zip from the forums including all the default services reg files, ran them all to return to default, even ran Tweaking.com Windows Repair, still the same issue.
Recently I've encountered a problem whilst trying to clean up my HDD (it was filling up way too quickly and I wanted to get rid of some unwanted games/programs), and I noticed a problem with file sizes of even small programs.
For a start, I am a massive FSX simmer, so that's why there's so many FSX addons in my screenshots.
Anyway, I use "iOBit System Care 6 Ultimate" to clean up my laptop, and I was trying to use the inbuilt uninstaller to get rid of some programs. This is what happened:
Now, I know that all those programs DO NOT take up that much HDD space, considering the hard drive in this laptop is currently only 500GB. I can almost guarantee those programs DO NOT take up those huge amounts because 1: They are reasonably small addons and 2: Because on my old laptop, they never took up that much space.
So I also tried Revo Uninstaller, and this was the result:
Now, notice the top result? The "Carenado Cessna Skylane HD Series FSX"? Well, that's DEFINITELY not 50GB, that's 100% wrong in all fronts. I took a screenshot to prove so:
Yeah, that's TOTALLY 50GB right there
So, last but not least, here's my HDD space/free space:
Note that only the "Windows C: and Recovery Drive F:" are part of the HDD, the other partitions are part of my external 1TB HDD.
Weirdest part is that, the files DON'T take up that much space when I right click - properties in Windows Explorer. Now, I'm not sure what's the go but it's definitely odd. I can't get legitimate sizes from neither Revo or iOBit, and it's really annoying.
Also, programs like "Alan Wake" and "Adobe Master Collection Creative Suite 6" show up as the normal file size, yet ANY Flight Simulator X addon shows up as a huge amount?
I'm booting off my SSD which is drive C: and I have games and programs on an extra hard drive which was origanally drive H: but after a restart it switched to I: and when I go into Disk Management to change it Drive H: isn't there.
I have a 2TB Western Digital My Book Essentials, it's filled with tons of old photos, movies, docs, games, and I'm scared to think of what else. The SATA to USB connector broke on it, so I took the drive apart and put it inside my computer. I opened up device manager because it wasn't showing up automatically and the 2TB is showing up as unallocated, I'm freaking out now because I'm scared the data was somehow deleted.What do I do?
edit: I realize also this isn't directly related to Windows 8 (besides the fact it's the OS I'm on), but I don't know where else to post it. I'd also like to say that I had a really deep feeling the drive was going to break continually for about two weeks before it happened, so if you have a similar feeling about something, don't ignore it!
I know there is good software out there to clone/image my hard drive and restore it to a new SSD drive. I'm just wondering though, since my laptop is brand new, I made a full recovery to a USB drive and included the OEM recovery partition.
Couldn't I just swap out the old HDD with the new SSD and boot with the recovery stick and do a full recovery back to the new SSD?
Also, however I do this, recover or image backup/restore, do I need to do some type of SSD alignment? I can't find a clear answer on that.
I am new to Windows 8, and first time with a laptop. I have 1tb hard drive (minus a few gb) in c drive. d drive is being used as recovery
This is how it was setup. What I would like to do is to partition the amount of space i have from c drive into another drive.
Can manage to partition some hard drive space over to another driver letter, if i do a fresh install of windows, will this new drive be formatted too?
(Just asking this because when I owned a desktop computer, I had two drives. A c-drive and a d-drive. When I re-installed windows 7 on the desktop, all my files were still available on the d-drive, hence asking the above last question).
A few months ago my laptop broke and it needed repairs. The HDD was replaced and i got my laptop back with one new HDD inside and one "broke" HDD in a bag. Later the "Repaired" Laptop crashed again so i bought a new one and took the HDD out of the old laptop. I bought a HDD case with USB connection and both of the HDD's where intact. The oldest HDD contained windows 7 and the replaced contained windows 8. Now i want to sell the Windows 8 HDD so i want it to be clean of personal files but i want it to keep windows 8. I thought the solution was to run the windows 8 on the HDD so i can use the program deletation program of that windows 8. The problem is i dont know how to run windows 8 of a hard drive. I have searched the internet but with no success.
My wife just got a new PC running Windows 8.1 Pro and she wants to re-connect her external hard drive that has all her game files on it to the new PC.
While the new PC recognizes the drive it states that it needs to be initialized , doing so would wipe the data currently on the drive which would be unacceptable. How to get the new PC to recognize this drive and its data?
I have just tried to Refresh my Windows 8.1 installation, but when running the refresh Windows 8.1 came up with an error I have not seen before, let alone do the refresh.
It displayed a message saying "The Drive is Locked, you will have to unlock the drive to continue" so HOW do you unlock a Hard Drive?
How to do this before I either pull my hair out, or start from scratch and re-format the drive and do a complete new install of Windows 8.1
One thing I have done about a week ago which may be causing this problem is I converted the Drive from MBR to GPT and if this has locked the drive.
