Need help finding elusive files on my laptop hard drive.

[mikestock]

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?

[jepalmer]

hawkeye-08 wrote:
I run a program called CCleaner (crap cleaner) that deletes temp files, etc.

X2

[mikestock]

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.

[1492]

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.

[Ron3rd]

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.

[cbconway]

hawkeye-08 wrote:
I run a program called CCleaner (crap cleaner) that deletes temp files, etc.

Great program! Wouldn't leave home without it.

[mikestock]

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.

[hershey]

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".

[leaddog]

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.

[Fizz]

mikestock wrote:
Found it. Problem was "N360 Backup" left over from when I was using Norton 360. It had gobbled up 300 GB. Should have caught it sooner.

Thanks all.

Now you know why most of us refuse to have that bloat hog on our PCs

[mikestock]

Found it. Problem was "N360 Backup" left over from when I was using Norton 360. It had gobbled up 300 GB. Should have caught it sooner.

Thanks all.

[mikestock]

2oldman wrote:
Have you looked for .bak files? Cleanup probably finds those, but may be worth a look.

Have you looked for files by size?

It's starting to sound like hidden and possibly protected files.

I searched through Files by Size and, as I said, they don't come close to adding up.

I use a free program called WINDIRSTAT to monitor my hard drive.

Win Dir Stat - Download from CNET.COM

I tried this CNet site and spent an hour trying to uninstall all the junk ware it added. My Malwarebytes and Nortons went berserk. I think CNet did this to me once before.

[2oldman]

Have you looked for .bak files? Cleanup probably finds those, but may be worth a look.

Have you looked for files by size?

It's starting to sound like hidden and possibly protected files.

[mikestock]

All temp files deleted, ran disk cleanup last night. Made no difference. I have CCleaner. Haven't run lately but the problem precedes last time. Will run again.

My Recovery uses just over 20 GB

[RoyB]

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...