I have searched every way I know to find out what is eating up the hard drive space on my HP laptop. When I look at the “C” drive under “Computer” it tells me I only have 70 GB available out of 575 GB. This puzzles me because when searching all groups under the “C” drive I can only locate about 150 GB in use. The biggest group is “Users” at 113 GB followed by “Windows” at 26 GB and “Program Files (x86)” at 7 GB. All other categories are less than 1 GB. Everything I can add up leaves, conservatively, 240 GB unaccounted for.In the initial setup of the computer I suspect that there is a duplicate set of files that I set up when the computer was new and I was dealing with the “Identities”. Never quite understood what I was doing at that point. I am the only user but I do have one identity set up as non-administrator with a different desktop and a Guest identity that it won’t let me delete. Can anyone tell me how to search further and find out how to account for the other files that are using 200+ GB of space?

The first thing that comes to mind is a whole lot of temp files and junk. Right-click on C:, Properties, Disk cleanup. See what that does.Another tactic: Look in Windows/temp. You could delete that entire directory and be ok. Check it out on google first if that's not something you want to do. At least in the 'old days' that used to be a huge repository of crap.As for identities, I don't know.

I run a program called CCleaner (crap cleaner) that deletes temp files, etc.

I use a free program called WINDIRSTAT to monitor my hard drive.Win Dir Stat - Download from CNET.COM

x2 on WinDirStat.Download directly from the source.

I almost think that is your backup drive partition used for recovery... Usually they are marked HIDDEN Some hardware drivers only support so many GB and maybe you system doesn't have all of the HARDDRIVE space formated...

Need help finding elusive files on my laptop hard drive.

leaddog
Explorer
Dec 10, 2014
Mikestock:

I downloaded the program a number of years ago and CNET didn't load all the junk at that time. They have changed their ways in that regard now and I don't use them that much now.

Hope it was of some help in the end.
hershey
Explorer
Dec 11, 2014
Back in the DOS day, Norton was the flagship of computer safety. Now its so darn intrusive that it paralyzes the computer and makes it nearly unusable in the name of "safety".
mikestock
Explorer
Dec 11, 2014
leaddog wrote:
Mikestock:

I downloaded the program a number of years ago and CNET didn't load all the junk at that time. They have changed their ways in that regard now and I don't use them that much now.

Hope it was of some help in the end.

I finally got rid of all of the junk from CNet and found the WinDirStat, stand alone, and it did help me find the problem.

hershey wrote:
Back in the DOS day, Norton was the flagship of computer safety. Now its so darn intrusive that it paralyzes the computer and makes it nearly unusable in the name of "safety".

I agree that Norton was a PITA a few years ago but I have to say that the newer versions are not so bad. Still, there is antivirus wear on the free market that is just as good or better.
cbconway
Explorer
Dec 12, 2014
hawkeye-08 wrote:
I run a program called CCleaner (crap cleaner) that deletes temp files, etc.

Great program! Wouldn't leave home without it.
Ron3rd
Explorer III
Dec 12, 2014
hershey wrote:
Back in the DOS day, Norton was the flagship of computer safety. Now its so darn intrusive that it paralyzes the computer and makes it nearly unusable in the name of "safety".

That was when Peter Norton, the founder, owned it.It became the biggest resource hog on the planet when Symantec bought it.
1492
Moderator
Dec 12, 2014
Windows Explorer is not the ideal method to search for files taking up drive space. I'd suggest the freeware TreeSize Free, which has been very helpful to me over the years tracing down space hogs. You can right-click on any drive or folder to get a detailed breakdown of file sizes.

Combine with CCleaner, which can also be set to custom delete files not included in their default config, should go far in cleaning up unnecessary files.
mikestock
Explorer
Dec 13, 2014
Thanks to everyone. I plan to save this thread. I'm sure I'll need it again and at my age I don't trust my memory to keep all of this information.
jepalmer
Explorer
Dec 23, 2014
hawkeye-08 wrote:
I run a program called CCleaner (crap cleaner) that deletes temp files, etc.

X2

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Need help finding elusive files on my laptop hard drive.

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