# Solved: C drive almost full, but where is the data?



## artocignus

Hi, I'm baffled by this mystery: The "space used/free space" line on my C drive has been creeping up and up and has finally turned red, but I can't find out what is using up the space. I've checked the "properties" of all the folders in my C drive, and the breakdown is as follows:
Program files - about 8 Gigs
Program files (X86) - about 12 Gigs
Windows - about 12 Gigs
Users - about 64 Gigs
Rest - about 2 Gigs

That adds up to about 100 gigs, give or take, but my C drive shows that I've used 120 out of 130 Gigs - so a 20 Gig discrepancy.

Now, even stranger: If I add up the sizes of the individual files and sub-folders in my "Users" folder, they don't even add up to 10 Gigs - so a discrepancy of 54 Gigs. I've checked the "show hidden files" option, and I still can't find the mystery 54 Gigs in my Users folder. However, if I select the entire contents of the Users folder, and click on "Properties", it shows a total size of 64 Gigs. But added up individually, that data doesn't appear to exist anywhere. I've read another thread in this forum dealing with a similar problem:

http://forums.techguy.org/windows-xp/555062-solved-hard-drive-almost-full.html

I tried his solution, namely to delete all the resetore points (the assumption is that there must be invisible backup files that eat up the space), but that has not even freed up one Gig and my space used line is still red!

Another thing is that my C drive has been filling up progressively without my installing any new software, so it's the system itself that's doing this - or could it be a virus? I'm running NOD 32, so I should be covered on the virus front.

I'm running Windows 7 64 bit. I should also mention that I've partitioned my drives and modified my system shortcuts so that my music resides in one drive, my pictures in another, my documents in still another, and so forth (I upgraded my internal drives to 1 x 320 Gig and 1 x 500 Gig). This means that my sub-folders in "users" don't hold much data, as my music, pictures and docs are all in their own drives. Could it be that my system is somehow seeing "phantom" data because I modified my system shortcuts to the music, pictures and documents folders?

Any help will be appreciated!

Art


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## 1002richards

Hi and Welcome,
Something you might want to look at ....
I found in Windows that my System Restore settings were saving backups in both 'C' and 'D'. Once I changed this to 'D' only that freed up quite a bit of space.

I hope that's of some help?
Richard


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## roshan007

By default, Windows 7 will allocate *10%* of your total C: drive/partition size to be used to store system restore point in this allocated disk space. This allocated space will no longer be available as free space.
Do this..
1.) Go to Start => Run => type sysdm.cpl and Enter
2.) In system properties, Go to System Protection tab => Select C drive (system) and click on Configure
3.) You may see slider to define disk space usage for system restore.
and If your running backup service then that would be the cause of space getting filled automatically 
Hope that solved your problem.


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## maltasama

If you use hibernate, hiberfil.sys can use up a lot of space. Here is a link explaining how to turn off hibernate and delete those files.

The command to turn hibernate back on is powercfg -h on

Another thing to look for is backup files for iphone, ipad or itunes or whatever other phone you might have and remove old backups.

Look in Users/yourname/AppData/Roaming and see what you can find there.


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## artocignus

Hi Richard,
Many thanks for your suggetion. I'm not sure if I understand you correctly. I've gone to "system protection" and checked in the protection settings box that system restore is turned off for all my drives except my C drive. Is that what you meant?
Art


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## artocignus

I've also reduced my allocation to system restore as suggested by roshan007, but it made no difference. In any event, 10% of my C drive is 13GB, which is nowhere near the missing 54GB missing space, and there is an indication in the "Configure" box saying "Current Usage 562MB".

maltasama's suggestion to turn off hybernate has freed up 2GB of space, which still leaves 52GB unaccounted for.

The mystery continues....

Many thanks for your help so far guys!

Art


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## artocignus

Ah! I think I've made a breakthrough! I obviously didn't check properly when I was looking for the missing data the first time. I've traced it to the following folder:

"Users/name/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Common/Media Cache Files"

53GB worth of data in there! All the files have either .cfa or .pek extensions. Are these temp files that I can delete? Some of them are obviously related to some sound files I've edited in Adobe Audition, but most of the file names mean nothing to me - just a bunch of numbers.


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## 1002richards

artocignus said:


> Hi Richard,
> Many thanks for your suggetion. I'm not sure if I understand you correctly. I've gone to "system protection" and checked in the protection settings box that system restore is turned off for all my drives except my C drive. Is that what you meant?
> Art


In Vista the default on my Dell for System Restore backups should have been 'D' but 'C' was also being used - so I changed it to 'D' only.
Do you have a user guide for your machine to check what the manufacturer's recommended setting is? How many drives did it come installed with?

Hope this is OK?


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## maltasama

I found this link by googling Users/name/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Common/Media Cache Files.

Also this one on deleting Media Cache Files.

Also one on Media Cache.

Hope this helps!


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## DoubleHelix

Run TreeSize.


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## fairnooks

> "Users/name/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Common/Media Cache Files"
> 
> 53GB worth of data in there! All the files have either .cfa or .pek extensions. Are these temp files that I can delete? Some of them are obviously related to some sound files I've edited in Adobe Audition, but most of the file names mean nothing to me - just a bunch of numbers.


Yes, those are the intermediate working index files for Adobe projects; I have to delete the media cache folder quite often or it builds into the hundreds of gigabytes on me.


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## artocignus

maltasama said:


> I found this link by googling Users/name/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Common/Media Cache Files.
> 
> Also this one on deleting Media Cache Files.
> 
> Also one on Media Cache.
> 
> Hope this helps!


Brilliant! That solves my problem. Seems there's no problem deleting these files and I can specify in my Adobe proferences that future media cache files are saved on a bigger external drive.

Many thanks to all!


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## Bitemebad91

What I have found is that most of your C drive data Is in your downloads folder, pictures, videos, documents and on your desktop  If you keep those clean you'll be fine what I have done is made a link to folders on my D drive rather than just keeping it there


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## maltasama

artocignus, glad to hear it! So you got the 52GB back? :::smile:::

If you consider this problem solved, click the 'mark solved' button.


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## artocignus

maltasama said:


> artocignus, glad to hear it! So you got the 52GB back? :::smile:::
> 
> If you consider this problem solved, click the 'mark solved' button.


Done. Now my C drive is only half full. Thanks again!


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