Why does Windows' File Mgr suck at accurately reporting HD space

[bigred]

FYI not asking for ways to clear out space as I'm all over that....but I am tired of rebooting and it often showing dramatically diff. amounts of space left. eg I brought up File Mgr (or "explorer" to be precise, and let's not even get into the stupidity of renaming the file mgr basically the same name as the web browser....) and it shows only 300MB space left. Yikes. So delete just a few files (perhaps 10MB worth) but IE (which I had up for other stuff) hangs....so I reboot. Now it shows nearly 700MB. :eek:

I delete a few unneeded files/etc anyway and reboot. It shows 290MB. :mad:

I reboot again. Shows 350MB. Tired and sick of it, I shut down for the night, reboot the next night......it shows 295MB.

And I have seen this kind of BS many times on diff PCs. I can see this varying a bit when rebooting due to clearing out temp files or what-not, but not THAT much. So why does File gr/Explorer suck so bad at telling me how much space I really have? And how do I know which is right?

(PS: yes I checked for viruses and the like)

[Darat]

Do you use a fixed or variable size for your paging file?

[bigred]

I'm embarrassed to admit I'm not only not sure but can't find where to check. :o I thought it was under Tools > Options somewhere.....

[Mongrel]

Start > Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance > Advanced (again).

If you're not sure what how to use it then it's probably best to leave it alone at "System managed size"

[bigred]

It was a set amount so I changed to "system managed size." However if I surmise this correctly, having it at a set size means I shouldn't have seen the jumps in varying HD space, correct?

So it's just that another MS creation blows? :)

[kevin]

Also a reboot frequently clears out temp files which would explain the extra space after a reboot.

You can manually clean up your temp space by going to Start...Run... Type in: %temp% (with the % signs) and click OK. The window that opens is your temp folder. Unless you store your own stuff in there (bad idea) anything with a date older than a day or two should be safe to delete.

Check the size of your internet explorer cache and set to about 20MB. It typically wants to take 10% of your disk space which is way too huge unless you're on a very slow connection.

[BPSCG]

It's just Bill Gates [rule8]ing with your head.

[rockoon]

Here is a thought:

Your free drive space is being accurately reported.

Its just that its constantly changing...

[bigred]

Here is a thought:

Your free drive space is being accurately reported.

Its just that its constantly changing...
Not that much. That doesn't make any sense.



It's just Bill Gates [rule8]ing with your head.THAT does.

[Dark Jaguar]

Explorer doesn't report it inaccurately. You see this on various machines, so it can't be a local issue.

Yes, the most likely explanation is that it IS reporting it accurately but it's changing. By "that much"? It can happen. It all depends on what's going on. There's the standard caching, both in IE and the swap file. There's the recycle bin. There's all those temp folders. There's the system recovery backups. And, there's also any little programs running in the background. Word, for example, autosaves a temporary document (not overriding the main one) every now and then just in case of power outage. Others could be using space for... less benevolent reasons.

In other words, first thing I would do is basically disable all the stuff that autoloads so you have a bare bones load of XP.

[bigred]

I must disagree, I don't think it does. I have had nothing but File Mgr up and precious little running in the background, ie TSR-like, rebooted and noticed diff's of hundreds of megs. And even if somehow that was explainable, it shouldn't go from a small amount to a MUCH greater amount and then back to a small amount when nothing is done to the system....

Not buying it. It's fn Gates messin w/our heads.

[bigred]

Exhibit B just happened:

Found some files to delete. About 100MB worth. Only about 300MB being reported free on the system. I delete the files and go to C: properties again (nothing else is running). It shows 730MB. :rolleyes: Yeah that's accurate.

I bet this doesn't happen in UNIX :cool:

[rockoon]

You do realize that some information may be scheduled to be written to disk, but is still sitting in memory?

[Dark Jaguar]

I have never witnessed what you are talking about. HD space appears to be reported accurately across operating systems I have on the same machine. It's more likely something IS being written to or deleted that you just aren't aware of. Gathering space data is a simple process and I really would be more surprised if it got it wrong at a seemingly random rate than if it got it right and you just aren't fully aware of what the PC is doing at any one time. Check your various caches. Or, better yet, try looking up cases like this online to see if others are reporting it or if it's a known issue at MS. I doubt what you're saying is true.

[bigred]

I find the "something going on in the background" highly unlikely. You have to keep in mind that this is a VERY scaled down machine.

But I'll bite: what could be getting written to the disk at that particular precise moment that would be hundreds of MB in size? I'm betting none of them apply, but who knows, maybe y'all can learn me sumthin. :cool:

[Nevermore]

Silly question, but are you doing a shift+delete or emptying your recycle bin after you delete the files in question?

Also, how is your drive formatted? If it is an NTFS volume there is a lot of vodoo potentially happening in the background including things like Alternate Data Streams, Single Instance Storage and file compression.

Do a search for "NTFS" on Wikipedia for a good synopsis.

[GodMark2]

And don't forget that space on the disk is allocated in chunks, so a file with one byte in it can take up to 4K of actual disk space (or even more on bigger disks).

[Dark Jaguar]

Yes, that's another thing. Most new PCs these days are already formatted with NTFS. Your drives could be set up to optimize loading frequently used programs. Further, it could have a compression system in place which would decompress files when they are in use. Further still, it could be indexing your drive.

All of these things should be looked into before you start assuming it incorrectly calculates disk space. Try a floppy disk. I'll bet that thing won't have it's space inaccurately reported.

[Crowbot]

Burn all your porn to DVD. If that doesnt fix it, then go purchase a new harddrive...space is cheap as dirt nowadays.

[bigred]

Yes, that's another thing. Most new PCs these days are already formatted with NTFS. Your drives could be set up to optimize loading frequently used programs. Further, it could have a compression system in place which would decompress files when they are in use. Further still, it could be indexing your drive.

All of these things should be looked into before you start assuming it incorrectly calculates disk space. Try a floppy disk. I'll bet that thing won't have it's space inaccurately reported.OK thx. I have no idea if this thing is NFTS for sure (I thought most were nowdays), or if this other fun stuff is/isn't happening....fargin Windows...

[Dark Jaguar]

That fun stuff are actually pretty good features, and they can all be disabled if you prefer.

But, moving right along, if you have less than a gig of free space, you have bigger problems.