HDD space constantly changing

K0rnIsAFAGGOT · Trackday Trickster Joined: 22 Jun 2008 Karma :

Earlier this morning I was just browsing the 'net when I notice a warning pop up from my tool bar saying I have low disk-space and I should remove some files. 'Weird' I thought, as I had cleaned a good 5+GB of shite not long ago. Now when I check my disk-space using 'Computer' I see my C: drive has say 581MB free, I refresh it and it has 585MB free, refresh again and now has 584. So it's constantly going up and down while I'm doing nothing at all. I installed one program yesterday which was AVG Free version and I can't remember installing anything else for at least a month. Any idea's why it's happening? (It's now on 572MB Laughing

). I was worried how it went down so fast earlier. Are there any logs I can view on Vista? Just now its gone down to 188MB. Confused

DEN MONKEY · World Chat Champion Joined: 17 May 2005 Karma :

Virtual memory maybe ?
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Phoenix · Twisted Firestarter Joined: 01 Aug 2002 Karma :

It's your swap file changing size, which as mentioned above controls how much virtual memory you have (hard drive space reserved for storing random data that's beeing used by running software).

When you deleted 5gb of stuff your swap file probably increased in size to take up a lot of that new free space you created as it was no doubt too small to start with. They're rarely more than a couple of gb in size though, depends what you run. You should always have a few gb free to allow the swap file space to work in.

el_oso · World Chat Champion Joined: 17 May 2008 Karma :

do you have defragmentation tool scheduled.
the defrag tool uses HDD space when it is organising your files. and then deletes them once it is done

ncrn · World Chat Champion Joined: 24 May 2006 Karma :

If it is vista, click the windows button and type disk cleanup, that should help you to grab some disk space back, you will probably have a ton of cookies on your pc you could get rid of.
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tofu-wtf · Nova Slayer Joined: 24 Jul 2007 Karma :

It will almost deffinately be the swap file (virtual memory). You can fix the size of this file but if you only have 581MB of free disc space and you are running Vista you need to take action NOW!!

You need more disc space for your OS and without knowing how your system is set up it isn't easy to advise a next 'cost effective' step. Find someone that knows what they're doing (not the bloke that offers to format your system when you get a virus) and get them to have a look.

(you could search for all files and folders created or modified within the last week or so, that will show if an application is creating files)
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