Hard Drive apppears full

[redhandmanc]

Hello

I have a 500 GB "C" (main) drive - "My Computer" shows the drive as 63gb free of 465gb.

The total used space on my "C" drive when I look at the properties is only 100gb so where the hell do I look to find the other supposedly used space.

I recently did fill my hard drive up to capacity with rubbish to overwrite some old deleted files - but then erased all the data after with heidieraser software

 

[Overwriter]

Hi redhandmanc

Do a search for “~erafswd.tmp” without the quotes and delete it. Your free space will be restored.

 

[redhandmanc]

as above

Thabks - yes I saw that in the FAQs pages after I posted - my system (Vista) cant find the temp file you or the FAQs mentioned - tried the option of turning off system restore too - that didnt solve it.

I have show hidden files turned on

 

[Joel]

Ongoing bug: that some files seem to grow non-stop when writing to it. This completely fools the erase pass so... yes search for files which seem to be unjustifiably large and see if you can delete or restore them, sorry.

Joel

 

[redhandmanc]

as above

Thanks to you both. However the problem is this overr]sized file isnt discoverable: -

My compter indicated 430gb used.
If I open the C drive and highlight all visible files, hiden files and folders the propertiestotal is only 100gb

So whee is the other 300gb

 

[Joel]

Make a new System Restore checkpoint, then clear all old ones.

Joel

 

[redhandmanc]

as above

Thanks - however I did say I had done that ........

 

[Joel]

Woops.

Do a search by filesize and see if any anomalous files come up. Or find a disk usage visualization tool to find the largest folder. Sometimes it may not be the System Restore log, but it may be the NTFS journal. Try clearing the journal with fsutil usn deletejournal. Remember to reenable the journal with fsutil usn createjournal afterwards. Journal deletion will take a few hours.

Joel

 

[redhandmanc]

Thanks

TY all - I ended up doing a reinstall, as I wanted to put bitlocker on

Problem solved