Question for Windows gurus

[Abagadro]

I am trying to clean up my hard drive and get some space and am deleting crap I don't use.  A couple of questions:

1) I have a couple of folders with names like f234lkasjasd098236497 that seem to be Windows updates. Can I safely delete these?

2) There is a large file called System Volume Information that seems to have a lot of duplicate files and "Recovery" files. Can I just delete this whole thing?

3)  Is there some hidden memony hog somewhere? I add up all the memory taken by my folders and they don't come even close to the 37G of stuff that it says is on my hard drive. What gives?

Thanks in advance.

[Trippy]

I am trying to clean up my hard drive and get some space and am deleting crap I don't use.  A couple of questions:

1) I have a couple of folders with names like f234lkasjasd098236497 that seem to be Windows updates. Can I safely delete these?

Which folder are these folders located in?

2) There is a large file called System Volume Information that seems to have a lot of duplicate files and "Recovery" files. Can I just delete this whole thing?

The folders in there are your System Restore points. If you don't need some or all of them you can delete them manually.

3)  Is there some hidden memony hog somewhere? I add up all the memory taken by my folders and they don't come even close to the 37G of stuff that it says is on my hard drive. What gives?

Well there's the stuff in the root of your C: drive which usually includes pagefile.sys which can be a very large file depending on your virtual memory settings. There's also various hidden files and folders, though I'm assuming if you can see System Volume Information you've set it up to show as much stuff as possible in Explorer.

[Abagadro]

Which folder are these folders located in?

They are just sitting there on my C: drive as their own folders.

Is "virtual memory" where it stores all sorts of temp files and whatnot?  I'd like to delete those as well, but don't know where to find them.

Thanks for your help

[toma levine]

Virtual memory is an extension of your system RAM on the hard drive. You don't want to delete it.


As a followup to that, the c:\Documents and Settings\your username\Local Settings area usually has a temp folder in it. There might be a small amount of garbage laying around there.

[Rodent]

3)  Is there some hidden memony hog somewhere? I add up all the memory taken by my folders and they don't come even close to the 37G of stuff that it says is on my hard drive. What gives?

Thanks in advance.

Delete all the crap in /windows/temp. Did it a few days ago and it cleared up plenty o gigs.

[Trippy]

Which folder are these folders located in?

They are just sitting there on my C: drive as their own folders.

Hmm...not sure what those are then...may just be temporary folders from installers that needed to unpack things but didn't clean up afterwards.

Is "virtual memory" where it stores all sorts of temp files and whatnot?  I'd like to delete those as well, but don't know where to find them.

No, virtual memory is disk space that's used when you run low on/out of physical RAM. In the case of Windows, it writes that information to pagefile.sys.

The main place for temp files is:

C:\Document and Settings\<Account Name>\Local Settings\Temp

There's also a Temp directory in your C:\WINDOWS directory.

Windows XP also comes with a Disk Cleanup tool (typically under Start->Accessories->System Tools) that you can try.

[Abagadro]

Thanks all.

[sidereal]

I believe service packs create those root folders.  Unless they're over a few hundred megs, it's worth your sanity to leave them alone.

[Trippy]

I believe service packs create those root folders.  Unless they're over a few hundred megs, it's worth your sanity to leave them alone.

On my Windows XP machines, the service pack uninstalls are in C:\WINDOWS ($xpsp1hfm$ for SP1 and $NtServicePackUninstall$ for SP2).

[grebo]

3)  Is there some hidden memony hog somewhere? I add up all the memory taken by my folders and they don't come even close to the 37G of stuff that it says is on my hard drive. What gives?

Because of File Slack the total size of your files will never equal the total disk used.

Basically, files are stored in clusters, and can't occupy less than a full cluster.  Cluster sizes in NTFS are 4k at minimum I think... so if a file is only 1k, 3k is wasted.  Same with a 5k file.

[Lum]

There's a utility in WinXP for reclaiming file space that you may want to try before just snorking away files you're unsure about. Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Disk Cleanup.

[Trippy]

3)  Is there some hidden memony hog somewhere? I add up all the memory taken by my folders and they don't come even close to the 37G of stuff that it says is on my hard drive. What gives?

Because of File Slack the total size of your files will never equal the total disk used.

Basically, files are stored in clusters, and can't occupy less than a full cluster.  Cluster sizes in NTFS are 4k at minimum I think... so if a file is only 1k, 3k is wasted.  Same with a 5k file.

While that is true, the "wasted" space on a 40 GB hard drive is not going to be more than a couple of hundred megabytes unless you have millions of hundred byte files scattered about. For comparison, my primary games directory is 62.9 GB but is taking up 63.1 GB on disk so I'm losing about 200 MB because of the minimum disk allocation size.

[DarkDryad]

Right click my computer. Then go to properties ---> System Restore Tab and turn off system restore and it will free up tons.  Also clean out the temp files in the browser those can take up quite a bit of space as well.

[SurfD]

And if you still have lots of space being taken up by things you cant account for, give SequoiaView a shot.
Its a nifty little disk browser utility that, while it does take a slight bit of getting used to, can tell you exactly how much space any given directory is taking up.
Just load it up, then look for abnormally large squares and see if they really should be that big.

[Shavnir]

Looks a lot like a gizmo I got a while back called Space Monger.  It was a lot older, but looks to do roughly the same thing.

[LordDax]

Sounds like your OS could use a bit of tweaking. THeres alot of hidden options in XP that can really speed up/enhance your PC. Including a way to keep a handle on your pagefile, how the PC access ram, how long to wait before send a 'cleaning' thread to the CPU. Theres a nice little program that I keep on my utility disk to run when Im fixing users's PCs. I recommend this program to anyone running XP, even if they only use the full feature demo to change their settings.

TweakXP

[LordDax]

Also a tip for anyone who stores alot of media on their PC. If you store alot of media on the same drive as Windows the you are going to get a significant slowdown. A work around this is to:

A) install your OS on a different HDD than everything else. You can purchase a cheap 1-5 gig HD for around $25. If you can't find one for that price, contact me and I'll send you one of my sixes for $15.

B) Use the cheat by creating two partitions when formating and installing your OS. A 10 gig partition for the OS and all the remaing space into the second.

Just two fixes that can speed up the pc alot.

EDIT: Completely agree with Zeftleft below. It works.

[Zetleft]

Another quick speed up, have your page file (virtual memory) as far removed from your windows install as possible.  From slowest to fastest setup as follows:  Windows & page file on same hard drive same partition - Win & page on same hard drive different partitions - Win & page on separate hard drives completely - Win & page on separate hard drives AND not on the same IDE ribbon (cable).   Of course this assumes you are putting the page file on a hard drive that is at least as fast as your main OS's hard drive.