Broadband Tech > Security > Security > wtf is wrong with my hard drive????

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Re: wtf is wrong with my hard drive????

reply to me1212
I've seen online backup software run amok and take up endless space. Time to uninstall.

reply to CUBS_FAN

reply to OldschoolDSL

reply to me1212
hey guys, sorry it took so long to get back to you, I took my pc to the reapair shop to see what they could do with it.

That seems a little premature; it's not even clear to me that it is 'broken' yet.

reply to me1212
Keep an eye on the C:\Windows\winsxs folder. This was a major issue with Vista and it seems to still be present in 7 as well.

Just Google "winsxs" and you'll see exactly what I mean. Some users report horror stories of this folder ballooning to over 20 GB. I've personally seen it grow to 8 GB when I used to have Vista on my laptop. Regardless of how few programs you install and whether or not you uninstall everything, the folder seems to keep growing and growing.

EDIT: The size may be illusory, since the folder supposedly contains many hard links.

For comparison:

   Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 230.813 MB (1%)
   Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 320 MB (1%)
   Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 412.506 MB (2%)
 

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reply to Dude111
Yes you right, but have a latest defragmentation 2009,
You can refer to pc health advisor

reply to me1212
I had the same problem: more of my drive space disappeared each day and I barely had any room left. 30 GB's of harddrive was inexplicably used. It was a Dell with XP.

I installed Advanced System Care (free cnet download) and it took 3 hours to clean up the mess (shadow, trace files, and all the clutter). It freed up about 3/4 of my harddrive. Suddenly my computer and internet connection was faster and I had plenty of free space.

I ran Advanced System Care about every week after that and experienced no problems. But it won't work with Norton on my new Win7 machine.

System Care gets decent to high reviews by most users but some say it can wreck a computer. Worked for me.

reply to dave

reply to OutOfMem

reply to therube

said by therube:

One day I actually look to see what winsxs is used for .

reply to OldschoolDSL
I agree: repair shop should be last resort. I mean, they can do more harm than good. You really, really, have to trust them.

Getting help from some repair techs is eternal (and infernal), since you'll always need them to tweak their fixes - and they wonder why customers keep calling them with more problems?

Every, I mean every, computer repair shop in my area went out of business. I'm almost computer illiterate and helped one of them on occasion. That's how bad they were.

You get a glimpse of what can happen just reading forums like this. You have a dozen experts with as many cures. That's why, more and more, I educate myself and try to delegate as much as possible to AV/Firewall security programs, keep everything updated, and keep it simple.

Many of the complicated solutions, require complicated fixes later. I'd rather just trust a decent AV-Firewall program like Norton (ugh, I used to hate them) and stay on top of updates.

I'm no fan of Norton and may go back to Avast with my next computer. I used to buy gaming machines with all the extras, but now think, why bother? The computer is just a tool and PC games are junk anyway.

reply to me1212
Largest ever patch just recently ... could that explain the missing space?

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