Free disk space in Windows XP Pro

[Mark42]

My 120 gig hard drive shows that it is almost full. I know that almost 50 gig of it is video clips being edited from my camcorder. I really don't think I have filled this thing up. <br /><br />There are 3 users on the PC, myself as admin, my wife and son. Some of the video directory is "shared". After browsing the C drive last night looking for where all the space went to, I concluded that the shared directories are counted once for each user giving a false disk usage. So when I select "properties" on the C drive to get usage and the pie chart it may be wrong.<br /><br />Am I right or wrong here? <br /><br />Thanks,<br />Mark.

 

[dolluper]

Re: Free disk space in Windows XP Pro

Disk cleaner might help in seeing things

 

[PierBridge]

Re: Free disk space in Windows XP Pro

Have you tried defragging? or maybe run scandisk that will tell you how much you really have left.

 

[PierBridge]

Re: Free disk space in Windows XP Pro

Disc Investigator: www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,22917,00.asp (free) <br /> <br />Chris Free Software Cleaner: <br /> http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,17780,00.asp (free) <br /> <br />DiskState <br /> http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,5265,00.asp (shareware) <br /> <br />These are just a few, loads more at Pcworld <br /> <br />GG

 

[PierBridge]

Re: Free disk space in Windows XP Pro

Originally posted by Mark42:<br /> My 120 gig hard drive shows that it is almost full. I know that almost 50 gig of it is video clips being edited from my camcorder.

So when you say 50 gigs of video clips does that mean you think you have 50 hours of camcorder content on that drive, how did you determine 50 gigs of video.

 

[Mark42]

Re: Free disk space in Windows XP Pro

ggoody,<br /><br />The directory that holds the video files has it's size listed as 49gig. I just rounded up to 50.<br /><br />Last night I ran the win xp disk cleaner utility. It said that there were 37 gig of temp files that can be deleted. I plan on reviewing the files before deleting them. Hopefully, the files are temp and can be tossed.<br /><br />Thanks for your input.<br /><br />Mark.

 

[JustMrWill]

Re: Free disk space in Windows XP Pro

With video editing...ALOT of resources is used up. I would bet that most of those temp files come from that and just didn't get cleaned up correctly. Installing new software, internet temp files, etc use up tons of space as well. Windows does a lousy job keeping stuff nice and tidy. (why should they care...they just figure you can buy a bigger drive if you have to.) Also, with video editing...your swap file may grow huge and unless you tell the system to delete the swap file at shut down, it maintains the size. (I'll have to look up the registry setting to do that if you want it).<br /><br />-JustMrWill

 

[BoatBuoy]

Re: Free disk space in Windows XP Pro

JustMrWill,<br /> If it's a M/$ application bundled w/Windows, you're correct. However in most cases it's the application that's not cleaning up after itself. It's the application's responsibility to do the clean-up and most 3rd party ones do a lousy job. IE also does a lousy job.