Went to install a service pack and it complained I didn’t have enough disc space. Strange I thought as I was sure I had plenty, but checking the disc it’s claiming only 1.7GB free out of 130GB. Yet if I select all directories and files on the disk using Windows Explorer (I have it showing hidden files and system files), and do “properties”, there’s only 45GB of files on the disc.

Where’s my other 83GB gone? How can I get it back?

pron stash ?

(find “disk management” and see what that shows)?

I’ve used a thing called clonespy on a previous computer – finds duplicated files for you to tidy up (suggest you don’t let it autodelete though)
(also treesize (I think) that shows you where the majority of your space has gone in pretty graphics)

Well I found a tool called SpaceMonger which seems to show me where the problem is. Having followed instructions to unprotect “System Volume Information”, it’s showing that as using 83GB – 157 files up to 4.3GB in size, from a range of dates from when I resinstalled the OS 3 months ago up to now.

Any ideas on why this is happening and how to fix this – I’m assuming I don’t want to just go deleting files in there!

Are you using Windows Vista? If so. it is a well known system restore ‘fault’ that was never acknowleged/resolved! Delete all your restore points, bar the most recent.

…a bit of googling suggests system restore points. Why are they eating so much disk, and why haven’t I had this problem before?

Windows 7. I reinstalled 3 months ago when I got the MB replaced under warranty – had previously run for almost a year without noticing this problem, so I’m a bit confused why it’s happening now. Do you have to turn on system restore, and had I not done that last time?

How do I delete restore points?

Deleted my old restore points (there’s an option under “disk cleanup”), which solved the problem. What a pain though – almost makes me want to get a Mac 😈

Restore points are handy if you manage to explode your PC, to be fair. But ancient ones aren’t that useful.

Restore points are handy if you manage to explode your PC, to be fair.

Indeed – which is why I had them turned on. Not so handy when they eat your whole HD. It would be nice if there was some way of deleting individual points (ie everything more than a month old) rather than just everything but the most recent one. I guess SpaceMonger did seem to allow me to delete the individual files (not sure if it would have denied permission if I’d tried though), so maybe I could have deleted individual ones that way.

Ah – a bit more googling and checking settings shows I was being a numpty. I’d got it set to use the whole disk for restore points, when if I set it to less than that (now set for 30%, which is less than half my free space) it will apparently automatically delete the oldest when it runs out of space, which is the sensible thing to do. Also CCleaner will apparently let you delete individual points.

Ah well I know now – I’ll cancel the Mac purchase.

Ah well I know now – I’ll cancel the Mac purchase

You’re only delaying the inevitable 😉