Topic: A Computer Question

[addicted2dvd]

I noticed something odd over here. I been taking loads of screen caps for my reviews lately. Basically between 100 and 200 caps per show and then just used the 6 to 8 caps that I need for the review. Then Once I upload all of them I delete everything from my computer... as I am stuck with a small harddrive at the moment.

This morning while getting screen caps on a show I was watching I got a pop-up that stated I was low on disc space. I looked and I couldn't believe it... I was very low... less then 500mb left. I normally have about 8 to 10 gigs. I emptied my trash... deleted some images I forgot to delete and so on and that only brought me to a little over a gig.

I never seen this before. But I never did the images like this before either. I tried rebooting the computer but that was of no help getting back the space and Right now I am doing a disc cleanup. And after that I will do a defrag to see if those will help get the space back. Is there anything else that I am missing that I should do?

[snowcat]

have you tried a Disk Cleanup Pete? its under System tools.... it tells you all the stuff you don't really need that takes up data...

The only other thing I can think of is getting a free program called Win Dir Stat it reads your hard drive tells you what and how much memory is being used in each folder etc.... its good if you want to find out something like this.

Good luck.... others may have better ideas though.

[RossRoy]

First things first - a defrag will not give you back free space. All it does is reorganize the data that is there.

Now, do you have Picasa installed and running while you take the screenshots? Picasa has some code that intercepts screenshots and saves a copy in your My Documents somewhere.. I don't know where exactly but a quick Googling should give you the answer.

If not, like Emma suggested, something like WinDirStat (personally I prefer Disk Space Fan) will allows you to visualize which folder is gobling all the space.

You could also use something like CCLeaner (short for Crap Cleaner) which deletes some commonly useless files (Windows Update uninstall files, temporary folders, etc.)

[addicted2dvd]

Yeah... like I said I am running the disc cleanup now. And thanks for the info on the programs. I will look into them next! 

[addicted2dvd]

Well... thanks to the Disc Space fan I found one major culprit already. I am back up to 6.3gigs now.

[Najemikon]

Sounds like you found it the easy way, but be aware there are three broad areas that fill up "silently".

C:/windows/temp
C:/documents and settings/[user name]/local settings/temp

The third is is your Internet cache, which is easier to clear by selecting Tools, Options, "Delete..." offline cache/temporary Internet files, something like that.

That last one was most likely, considering all these pictures are on flickr and being uploaded.

[RossRoy]

Sounds like you found it the easy way, but be aware there are three broad areas that fill up "silently".

C:/windows/temp
C:/documents and settings/[user name]/local settings/temp

The third is is your Internet cache, which is easier to clear by selecting Tools, Options, "Delete..." offline cache/temporary Internet files, something like that.

That last one was most likely, considering all these pictures are on flickr and being uploaded.

These folder would all be caught by CCleaner.

Also, it might be a good idea to go into Internet Options and limit the IE Cache size to something more logical - like 25-50MiB instead of the default (which I think is a % of total disk space or some such, which makes it insanely big)

[addicted2dvd]

I am now up over 7... close to 8 gigs now.

[Touti]

These folder would all be caught by CCleaner.

Also, it might be a good idea to go into Internet Options and limit the IE Cache size to something more logical - like 25-50MiB instead of the default (which I think is a % of total disk space or some such, which makes it insanely big)

I always set my cache size to 1 meg.  For me cache on web browsers has become useless the second high-speed internet was invented.  It was useless to prevent re-downloading the same images over a low speed connection but nowadays I really don't see why they still use that.

[Alien Redrum]

I'll give another rec for CCleaner. Love that little program.