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Hard Drive usage

leslie_gardener

17 years ago

My daughter has an 80 gb HD and Usage shows as 58 gb.

There are no pics or tunes on the computer.

She has cleaned everything...temp files/cookies/history etc.

She has cleaned Standard Free Space and defraged.(although 16 gb won't defrag)

Her Utilities and a couple of programmes account for less than 100 mb.

Does this seem a bit high to anyone else? Any suggestions?

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Comments (6)

kudzu9
17 years ago
If she doesn't have much on her computer in the way of large programs, something is weird here. How long have you had this computer and what is it used for? There is a cheap ($8) utility, called DiskPie Pro that will help you figure out, manage, and cleanup whatever is on the disk that may not be necessary. It's probably just an accumulation of innocent things and programs, but there is also a chance that her computer has been compromised by hackers who are using her computer to store their stuff. It might sound far-fetched, but it's increasingly common, especially if you don't have an effective firewall in place. These things are sometimes called "botnets" and it's estimated that about 5 million computers have been infected. I'll add a second post below with a link to a story on this.

Here is a link that might be useful: DiskPie Pro
kudzu9
17 years ago
Here's the news story I mentioned. Nobody knows for sure how many computers are compromised. Symantec claims about 5 million, this story mentions 13 million...

Here is a link that might be useful: Botnets - Washington Post article
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randy_ca
17 years ago
The actual disk space of an 80 GB hard drive is around 74.5 GB of space, roughly 7% less than what they advertise.
Still 58 GB of Used space is an enormous amount, not sure what she's looking at to get this info.
For a start, I would check the volume for errors.
Right click drive C:/ properties/ tools tab/ error checking - check now, put a check in both boxes and start.
leslie_gardener
Original Author
17 years ago
Thanks for the info kudzu9
randy ca she got this info from C/Properties/General

I got fed up trying to figure it out so I ran the Recovery disk and she's now down to 2.59 GB of usage.
I'll keep an eye on it to see if it creeps up again.
kudzu9
17 years ago
leslie-
If this grows by any significant amount (and I mean even less than a GB in the next week or two), without anything new being installed, you've got something going on there that needs attention. Good luck.
iris_gal
17 years ago
If nothing is being misinterpreted, there is a problem.
With an 80 gig hard drive the computer probably has Win XP operating system. Which is quite large itself. I don't understand exactly where she got her numbers:

"randy ca she got this info from C/Properties/General"

I quickly looked at my hard drive free space by clicking on My Computer and then right click C:

{{gwi:1442011}}

and choose propertes to view the pie graph.

{{gwi:1442013}}

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