Defragmentation is "eating" HD space??? Also shareaza

[Green_Lantern]

I using Vista and well, I don't know how to use the before/after images from the defragmentation tool.

What I am seeing is that when I left the PC defragmentatin all night was that there was less free space avaiable in the morning, and it wasn't doing anything else. It appears to have lost around 10Gb of file.

I used to have shareaza, but had to unistal today because of a stupid update that crashed the programl, I am not sure if the ghost files from incomplete downloads are still in here, but either way, what the hell happened??

 

[Shakey]

Defragging shouldn't do that. That's a lot of space to lose.

Could shareazza have been hiding incomplete file downloads from your used space? Not sure if that's even possible, but uninstalling it could have made those files suddenly appear as used space on your drive.

 

[Hylian]

Did you run Check Disk on you HDD to check for bad sectors.

 

[Green_Lantern]

I recommend using Defraggler (http://www.piriform.com/defraggler), and try again. It is NOT impossible to lose space while defragging though, I don't know how much space you are talking about but it can happen due to stuff using up new (unused?) blocks and all that.. blah blah blah.. Just run Defraggler.

Oh, says 10GB, seems like a lot, heh... You sure though? The above still applies.

465Gb is my total hardrive. And I am sure, it had around 163GB free at night and 149gb at morning.

Defragging shouldn't do that. That's a lot of space to lose.

Could shareazza have been hiding incomplete file downloads from your used space? Not sure if that's even possible, but uninstalling it could have made those files suddenly appear as used space on your drive.

The lost of space happened even before the unistalling, I uninstalled because of it.

Did you run Check Disk on you HDD to check for bad sectors.

No, I am not sure how to do that.


Thanks for the advices, but I am going to travel today so I am only going to try anything when I get back.

Enjoy the Carnaval folks.

 

[Shakey]

Did you run Check Disk on you HDD to check for bad sectors.

No, I am not sure how to do that.


Thanks for the advices, but I am going to travel today so I am only going to try anything when I get back.

Enjoy the Carnaval folks.

Right click on the drive you want to scan and click on "Properties". Go to the "Tools" tab, "Error-Checking" should be the first option there. Click on "Check Now". Make sure you put a check mark in the option to scan for and recover bad sectors. Scan away. This will probably take some time.

 

[PatrThom]

It's not free, but this may be of help as well. It's in my go-to kit of utilities.

SpaceMonger

--Patrick

 

[Green_Lantern]

Did you run Check Disk on you HDD to check for bad sectors.

No, I am not sure how to do that.


Thanks for the advices, but I am going to travel today so I am only going to try anything when I get back.

Enjoy the Carnaval folks.

Right click on the drive you want to scan and click on "Properties". Go to the "Tools" tab, "Error-Checking" should be the first option there. Click on "Check Now". Make sure you put a check mark in the option to scan for and recover bad sectors. Scan away. This will probably take some time.[/QUOTE]

It says that it can't do it right now, that it needs to be done the next time I start the sistem, my only questions are: If I do this can I stop it and restart the sistem normaly? and Is there any chance this will cause more problems with the HD usage? Or problems in general? just to make sure, I was thinking in leaving over-night again.

 

[Shakey]

It actually does the scan before you get into windows, that's why it needs to reboot. I'm pretty sure you can stop the scan if you want to, but I would set aside time to do it and just leave it alone. Once it starts, it will not ask you for any more prompts. It will scan and then boot into windows when you're done. If you want to look at the results later, let me know I'll post how to find the log.

It shouldn't cause any more problems than you would get with normal usage. By that I mean if there is something wrong with your hard drive and it is physically going bad, it will continue to go bad no matter what.

 

[Green_Lantern]

Hey, thanks! that actually worked, and it went from 147gb of free-space to 163gb again \o/

 

[Shakey]

I wonder if you PC shut down during the defrag. I suppose that could cause it to happen. Glad you got it all back though.

 

[Green_Lantern]

I wonder if you PC shut down during the defrag. I suppose that could cause it to happen. Glad you got it all back though.

I rarely, if ever, pay attetion to the PC when it is defragging so I don't know.

I have two more questions
1)Should I try to defrag again? even if just to see if it is okay now
2) Error Checking again would free more space or it is just to fix problematic files?

either way thanks again.

 

[Shakey]

I doubt error checking will free anymore space. It should have fixed what it could in one shot.

You can run defrag if you want to, mine was always set to run it weekly so I don't worry about it. From what I've heard, it's not as big of an issue as it was with previous versions of Windows. You may want to watch it the first time you run it though. Make sure it finishes without any problems.

 

[Shakey]

If you want to see what check disk found, here is how you find the log.

1. Click "Start", and start typing in "Event Viewer"
2. You should see Event Viewer show up now, click on it.
3. On the left side of this window, Click on "Windows Logs", then click on "Application"
4. It should load a whole bunch of stuff. Click on the heading "Source" to resort everything.
5. Look for an entry with "Wininit" as the source. The time should be around the time you did the scan. Click on it.

This will give you information on what it found and repaired and stuff.