SSD almost full

On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 16:26:15 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:

I recommend against doing that. Besides being dangerous, it's only a
very temporary solution.

Turning off System Restore isn't dangerous. It's one of the first things
I disable when I install a new system. To begin with, SR leaves crap
behind and second, I'll put my money on an image (2 copies, one on the
hdd, another on an external hdd) created by Macrium Reflect any day.

--
s|b

On 4/27/2017 2:36 PM, s|b wrote:
On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 16:26:15 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:

I recommend against doing that. Besides being dangerous, it's only a
very temporary solution.

Turning off System Restore isn't dangerous. It's one of the first things
I disable when I install a new system. To begin with, SR leaves crap
behind and second, I'll put my money on an image (2 copies, one on the
hdd, another on an external hdd) created by Macrium Reflect any day.


+1!!!. I never use SR. I have my backups on two external drives, one
of which is kept outside my home.

On 27/04/2017 02:40:10, swalker wrote:
On Thu, 27 Apr 2017 00:58:52 +0100, mick wrote:

On 26/04/2017 23:01:43, swalker wrote:
On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 12:40:31 -0500, swalker wrote:


I have 2 SS drives. The C drive is used for the Win 7 operating system
and program files. The 2nd -Z drive- is used for data of any kind
including email files, literally thousands of mp3 files, Lotus 1-2-3
worksheet files, lots of images I have collected and anything else I
can manage to place or direct there


Both drives have a capacity of 240GB. The C drive has 6% unused space
while the Z drive has 60% remaining.

For the life of me I can't figure out why so much space is used on the
C drive.

Is Win 7 with the many updates that massive?

Is the SS drive failing to use some space for some reason?

Where do I begin to look for an answer?

Thanks for any suggestions.
After starting this item and before replies a knowledgeable person
said to try windirstat which I did.

I wish you patience, you'll need it. :-)

Absolutely correct

Overwhelmed by the info I took a break and when I returned I read the
replies.

The Window/temp folder had 35000 items and when deleted gave another
10GB of space.

One othere tempt folders when cleaned gave me another 7 GB

One item that stood out on windirstat was Acronis which has a single
file that is almost 500 MB and another file which is an update that
has almost as much. Suspicious.

You just made me go have a look at the Acronis software I've got. The
Acronis True Image program has really got large in recent years which I
had not noticed before. 2008 version it was 23MB, 2010 was 102MB, 2011
was 159MB, 2014 was 268MB and the latest 2017 version is 493MB.
So if you have the 2017 version then no, I don't think it is
suspicious.

And the gigantic update?

It is the original program + the update combined. The update is only
small, an additional 1MB over the original program.
Original: Acronis True Image 2017 492MB
Update: Acronis True Image 2017_8029 493MB
Update: Acronis True Image 2017_8041 493MB

--
mick

On Fri, 28 Apr 2017 00:43:14 +0800, "Mr. Man-wai Chang"
wrote:

On 27/4/2017 1:40 AM, swalker wrote:

I have 2 SS drives. The C drive is used for the Win 7 operating system
and program files. The 2nd -Z drive- is used for data of any kind
including email files, literally thousands of mp3 files, Lotus 1-2-3
worksheet files, lots of images I have collected and anything else I
can manage to place or direct there


Both drives have a capacity of 240GB. The C drive has 6% unused space
while the Z drive has 60% remaining.

For the life of me I can't figure out why so much space is used on the
C drive.

Is Win 7 with the many updates that massive?

Is the SS drive failing to use some space for some reason?

BTW, if you didn't change it, your personal files in
c:\users\your_account will be taking up a lot of space.

Check c:\windows\temp and the temp folder in %appdata%! The files could
be deleted.

Check the cache folders of your browser(s). They take up spaces.

Check c:\users\your_account\download. The files could be deleted if you
have them backed up or if the files could be re-downloaded.

I do use Page File and have determined that it isn't the problem.
Thanks for the suggestion.

On Thu, 27 Apr 2017 20:52:46 +0100, mick wrote:

On 27/04/2017 02:40:10, swalker wrote:
On Thu, 27 Apr 2017 00:58:52 +0100, mick wrote:

On 26/04/2017 23:01:43, swalker wrote:
On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 12:40:31 -0500, swalker wrote:


I have 2 SS drives. The C drive is used for the Win 7 operating system
and program files. The 2nd -Z drive- is used for data of any kind
including email files, literally thousands of mp3 files, Lotus 1-2-3
worksheet files, lots of images I have collected and anything else I
can manage to place or direct there


Both drives have a capacity of 240GB. The C drive has 6% unused space
while the Z drive has 60% remaining.

For the life of me I can't figure out why so much space is used on the
C drive.

Is Win 7 with the many updates that massive?

Is the SS drive failing to use some space for some reason?

Where do I begin to look for an answer?

Thanks for any suggestions.
After starting this item and before replies a knowledgeable person
said to try windirstat which I did.

I wish you patience, you'll need it. :-)

Absolutely correct

Overwhelmed by the info I took a break and when I returned I read the
replies.

The Window/temp folder had 35000 items and when deleted gave another
10GB of space.

One othere tempt folders when cleaned gave me another 7 GB

One item that stood out on windirstat was Acronis which has a single
file that is almost 500 MB and another file which is an update that
has almost as much. Suspicious.

You just made me go have a look at the Acronis software I've got. The
Acronis True Image program has really got large in recent years which I
had not noticed before. 2008 version it was 23MB, 2010 was 102MB, 2011
was 159MB, 2014 was 268MB and the latest 2017 version is 493MB.
So if you have the 2017 version then no, I don't think it is
suspicious.

And the gigantic update?

It is the original program + the update combined. The update is only
small, an additional 1MB over the original program.
Original: Acronis True Image 2017 492MB
Update: Acronis True Image 2017_8029 493MB
Update: Acronis True Image 2017_8041 493MB

What happened was that Acronis downloaded the entire original and the
update as a single download, but it wasn't deleted after the update
was made. Ditton for the original download, so I had both the original
download and the update still on the system which when deleted gave me
more free space.

In total I went from having 12GB free to having 154GB free. Acronis
certainly wasn't a huge part of the problem but they made a
contribution.

End of story.

In message , s|b
writes:
On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 16:26:15 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:

I recommend against doing that. Besides being dangerous, it's only a
very temporary solution.

Turning off System Restore isn't dangerous. It's one of the first things
I disable when I install a new system. To begin with, SR leaves crap
behind and second, I'll put my money on an image (2 copies, one on the
hdd, another on an external hdd) created by Macrium Reflect any day.

Leaving it on is rarely dangerous either. I have Macrium backups myself,
but haven't AFAICR turned off SR. Can't remember whether I've used it
myself - certainly not recently - but I _have_ used it on other's
machines, and it has worked. It's certainly a lot quicker than a Macrium
restore, and - if it works - is also likely to be more recent than the
last Macrium image, so you may not lose things (e. g. recent emails).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. -Leo Tolstoy,
novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

pjp wrote in
:

In article ,
says...

I have 2 SS drives. The C drive is used for the Win 7 operating
system and program files. The 2nd -Z drive- is used for data of any
kind including email files, literally thousands of mp3 files, Lotus
1-2-3 worksheet files, lots of images I have collected and anything
else I can manage to place or direct there


Both drives have a capacity of 240GB. The C drive has 6% unused space
while the Z drive has 60% remaining.

For the life of me I can't figure out why so much space is used on
the C drive.

Is Win 7 with the many updates that massive?

Is the SS drive failing to use some space for some reason?

Where do I begin to look for an answer?

Thanks for any suggestions.

I'd be first looking at how much junk is sitting unused in your "temp"
folders, mainly "Windows/Temp" and "C:\Users\'your login name
here'\AppData\Local\Temp". Seen so many people never clean out their
"temp" folder and it gets big over time.

You could also check how many restore points you've saved and given
only the last couple and the very first one are most usefull ...

And run Chkdsk as it might simply be screwed up and reporting wrong.
I've seen that happen also.

On my way to the Temp file, I stopped he

C:\Users\Boris\AppData\Local

and noticed there were 1,481 folders such as this:

C:\Users\Boris\AppData\Local\{00BA85A2-D807-41C5-9FE0-87D06A9E263D}

All were empty. What is all that?

Thanks.

On Fri, 28 Apr 2017 00:09:58 +0100, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

Leaving it on is rarely dangerous either.

IMO it's a waste of space.

I have Macrium backups myself,
but haven't AFAICR turned off SR. Can't remember whether I've used it
myself - certainly not recently - but I _have_ used it on other's
machines, and it has worked. It's certainly a lot quicker than a Macrium
restore, and - if it works - is also likely to be more recent than the
last Macrium image, so you may not lose things (e. g. recent emails).

The few times that I tried SR it left useless crap behind. Not so when
you restore a MR image.

--
s|b

Boris wrote:


On my way to the Temp file, I stopped he

C:\Users\Boris\AppData\Local

and noticed there were 1,481 folders such as this:

C:\Users\Boris\AppData\Local\{00BA85A2-D807-41C5-9FE0-87D06A9E263D}

All were empty. What is all that?

Thanks.

Look it up in Regedit. It might map
to a particular application, and give you
a hint.

Paul

In message , FredW
writes:
On Fri, 28 Apr 2017 23:09:32 +0200, FredW wrote:

On Fri, 28 Apr 2017 22:59:27 +0200, "s|b" wrote:

On Fri, 28 Apr 2017 00:09:58 +0100, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

Leaving it on is rarely dangerous either.

IMO it's a waste of space.

I have Macrium backups myself,
but haven't AFAICR turned off SR. Can't remember whether I've used it
myself - certainly not recently - but I _have_ used it on other's
machines, and it has worked. It's certainly a lot quicker than a Macrium
restore, and - if it works - is also likely to be more recent than the
last Macrium image, so you may not lose things (e. g. recent emails).

The few times that I tried SR it left useless crap behind. Not so when
you restore a MR image.

Ah, but did it work (meaning fix whatever you were trying to run it to
undo)?

+1

"Useless crap" is a sad fact of modern computer usage. I do my best to
keep on top of it, within the time I am willing to allocate to it, as I
guess most of us at least here do, to varying extents.

I never found a reliable description of what SR does and what it
restores and often it fails completely.

No, nor have I. Certainly the registry, but some other files too. The
difficulty in finding exactly what makes one suspect the obscurity is
deliberate - maybe to make it harder for others to "make a better System
Restore"?

It takes only useless space.

I could make the point often made when such observations are made here
(and even in the XP group), that space is too cheap these days to worry
much about it; since I don't actually agree with that point anyway, and
the OP (!) was talking about an SSD where it _isn't_ that cheap yet,
I'll just take issue with the "useless" bit: it isn't useless if it gets
you out of a hole. IIRR, you can limit the amount (or is it percentage?)
it can use.

So after a re-install of my Windows I switch it off,
install Macrium Reflect Free and make images every week.
The images never fail (many times proven in practice).

I too use Macrium, and wouldn't be without it. However, for many - I
think all, except possibly one - of the people I support, there's no way
they'd ever use it, either because they'd consider it too much faff (I
know, I know ...), or because they genuinely can't (it's boot disc isn't
usable by the blind yet, and I support several such). For these people -
and I suspect the majority of users - System Restore is sufficiently
simple that it's worth getting them to leave it on; I _have_ had
numerous occasions where it has rescued the situation. I don't know what
proportion - possibly below 50%; however, being pragmatic about what you
expect the average user to do, I see it as more good than bad. (I just
wish it had a way of marking certain "saves" as not to be overwritten,
at least until _I_ say so. But whatever.)

By the way ...
I keep my emails on an other partition, I make daily backups
and I have no idea what SR does for emails (if anything).

I'd be surprised - at least in W7 and on, where email isn't part of the
system, but even in XP - if it does anything.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Veni, Vidi, VO5 (I came, I saw, I washed my hair) - Mik from S+AS Limited
), 1998

In message , FredW
writes:
On Sat, 29 Apr 2017 11:33:25 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:
[]
I too use Macrium, and wouldn't be without it. However, for many - I
think all, except possibly one - of the people I support, there's no way
they'd ever use it, either because they'd consider it too much faff (I
know, I know ...), or because they genuinely can't (it's boot disc isn't
usable by the blind yet, and I support several such). For these people -
and I suspect the majority of users - System Restore is sufficiently
simple that it's worth getting them to leave it on.


I understand, I read about more such stories.
Fortunately I am not one of these people.

Sometimes I wonder how many people know so little of Windows.
It is almost like driving without any lessons, let alone a license.

But, do you know much about ignition, carburation, swirl chambers, ...?
Could you strip down and rebuild a modern engine (I say modern, to
include all the electronics)? It's a good parallel: it could be argued
that computing has passed the point where people _need_ to know much
about what goes on "under the hood". People like you and me despair over
how little they know, but the majority of the public don't feel the
_need_ to - and when it goes wrong, are quite happy (inasmuch as
anyone's ever "happy" to do so) to pay someone else to "fix it".

(Even in computing, there are levels: you probably [I certainly!] know
less about, say, file systems, booting, etc., than the great Paul, and I
suspect even _he_ doesn't do much assembler these days ...)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Now, don't worry. We'll be right behind you. Hiding. (First series, fit the
sixth.)

On 28/4/2017 6:38 AM, swalker wrote:

I do use Page File and have determined that it isn't the problem.
Thanks for the suggestion.


Do you happen to have a Windows.OLD or Windows.!BT folder in your C:\?

--
@~@ Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
^ ^ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.39.3
�借貸! ��騙! ��交! �打交! �打劫! �自殺! 請考慮綜� (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_...sub_addressesa

Paul wrote in news
Boris wrote:


On my way to the Temp file, I stopped he

C:\Users\Boris\AppData\Local

and noticed there were 1,481 folders such as this:

C:\Users\Boris\AppData\Local\{00BA85A2-D807-41C5-9FE0-87D06A9E263D}

All were empty. What is all that?

Thanks.

Look it up in Regedit. It might map
to a particular application, and give you
a hint.

Paul


I did, but there were no results.

I looked at C:\Users\Boris\AppData\Local again, and arranged by date.
The first folder is from 9/17/2011, and the most recent folder is from
today.

From 9/17/2011 through 7/15/2014, there many sequentially dated folders,
but there are large time spans with no folders. Now that I think back,
I believe this machine was not used all that much, and sat in another
room only used by others once in a while. I was still happy with my Dell
4550 XP machine, which was my workhorse.

It must have been around July 2014 when I moved this Windows 7 machine
into my den, and now it has become my workhorse. Beginning with
7/15/2015, there is at least one folder dated for every day since.. For
some days, there are two folders, and many times the timestamp is
exactly 12 hours apart.

Specifically:
2011 23 folders
2012 20
2013 18
2014 222
2015 525
2016 552
2017 159

Still baffled.

Boris wrote:

I did, but there were no results.

I looked at C:\Users\Boris\AppData\Local again, and arranged by date.
The first folder is from 9/17/2011, and the most recent folder is from
today.

From 9/17/2011 through 7/15/2014, there many sequentially dated folders,
but there are large time spans with no folders. Now that I think back,
I believe this machine was not used all that much, and sat in another
room only used by others once in a while. I was still happy with my Dell
4550 XP machine, which was my workhorse.

It must have been around July 2014 when I moved this Windows 7 machine
into my den, and now it has become my workhorse. Beginning with
7/15/2015, there is at least one folder dated for every day since.. For
some days, there are two folders, and many times the timestamp is
exactly 12 hours apart.

Specifically:
2011 23 folders
2012 20
2013 18
2014 222
2015 525
2016 552
2017 159

Still baffled.

GUID identifiers can be "randomly" crafted by applications,
for things like temporary storage. I was hoping that
the purpose of yours was "dedicated" (like a CLSID)
and there was some evidence in the registry about it.
But that doesn't have to be the case, and whatever
software is doing that, can keep generating random ones.

You could leave ProcMon running all day, and capture
all WriteFile operations, but the file collected would
be huge. For example, when I wanted to trace a 20 minute
Macrium backup operation (lots of I/O!) , the ProcMon collection
of ETW events, required 9GB of storage. For such a purpose,
you want a 64-bit OS and ProcMon64. Your daily usage
pattern would not be quite as wasteful as that, but that's just
a warning that Sysinternals.com Process Monitor can generate
a *lot* of data, given a chance.

Once you had evidence that the "something" had dumped a
directory, you would stop the data collection of ProcMon and
"Save" the ProcMon trace. You could, for example, just save
a particular flavor of event (just the WriteFile ops),
using the filter menu in ProcMon. Or, save the whole trace.

You can convert the trace to a text file, then search
for the GUID in the trace, and see what "process" wrote it.
It would be an annoyance to do that, and have the item listed
as "SVCHOST". But that's all part of the fun. If ProcMon
would log the PID (process ID) of the SVCHOST, you can
move individual services into their own SVCHOST (the
way that Win10 has partially done this now), and be
able to identify the culprit that way.

# Put wuauserv in its own private SVCHOST, for tracking.

sc config wuauserv type= own

# Put it back the way it was, later.

sc config wuauserv type= share

If the culprit is a user program, the analysis will be... easier.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...processmonitor

Paul

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

it could be argued that computing has passed the point where
people _need_ to know much about what goes on "under the hood".

Like that's going to happen :-)

*******

Take my car as an example. I've learned a *lot* about cars
since owning my latest one, just because it's a PITA :-)

My next project is fixing an IMRC, without having the
engine block pulled off the mounts (yet again). When
they do that, they're causing collateral damage, and
makes car repairs a ridiculous undertaking. This is
what happens when every repair inside a modern car
is a "knuckle buster", and there is no room to do
anything.

[ intake manifold runner control - the assembly that
changes length of the intake manifold, to cause
resonance on air intake and improve engine power
over a wider range of RPMs. A bitch if vacuum assisted.
It doesn't really matter what it does, except the
car is not allowed to throw "codes" during a government
mandated "emissions check". Which relies on the car
computer, to pass! They no longer verify emissions
by actually sampling the exhaust air.]

Now, ask me why I have my own "code reader" :-)
That's the car guy equivalent of a "BSOD" :-)

What a jolly scam. To get a car to pass emissions,
takes as much science as putting a man on the moon.
And you can't get plate renewal, unless it passes.

Paul