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[martinuzz]

For some reason, my C:\ drive is filling up with data, and I don't know what's doing that.
I noticed last week that I only had 300 Mb out of 254 Gb left as free space 
So I de-installed some stuff, and freed up 21 Gb.

Now, only a week later, I look at the drive again, and it only has 3 Gb of free space left on it 
So in only 1 week, it filled up with 17 Gb of unknown data.

I rarely if ever download things from the net. I don't have many pics or music on it. I never download movies.
Wtf is filling it up?

Avast! says it's clean, Spybot S&D comes up clean, CCleaner doesn't find much to clean up...
like wth. Never seen this before in all the years I've had computers.

Anyone got any ideas what might be causing this?
Is there a tool that I can use that will tell me which directories hold massive amounts of data, so I don't need to go through every single folder and subfolder?


EDIT: WOW. Just WOW. Chkdisk had no errors to reports, and then I ran disk cleanup on the system files, that cleaned up 6 Gb of leftover windows update backups. Not spectacular, but it helped a bit.
Then I went into more options in the disk cleanup system tab, and pressed clean up on the system restore and shadow copies, which are mostly old system restore points and backups.

THAT CLEANED UP 60 Gb. Holy. Fixed, I guess.

[i2amroy]

Yeah, Windows restore points will gobble up all of your free space unless you stop it.

[wierd]

So does the winsxs folder. >: (

If you dont mind the HORRIBLE fragmentation that happens, you can reclaim a good chunk of the space winsxs uses without actually deleting anything by turning on disk compression for that folder.

Here's a blog post about how to accomplish this.

Since this folder is rarely overwritten (just more stuff added), once you compress and then run defrag (DEFINITELY DO THIS AFTER COMPRESSING. FOR REAL. NTFS compression makes thousands and thousands of file fragments), it then sits there quietly, taking up significantly less space. 

[martinuzz]

Hmmm. I think there was a bug in windows 7..
Even after cleaning up those 66 Gb, my harddrive kept re-filling up at about 1Gb/day.

Until I installed yesterday's windows update. Update took ages. Comp was stuck a while at the "configuring windows update 100% done, don't shut down your pc" message, then it rebooted itself.
Then I got the same screen with a "clean-up, don't shut down your pc" message which lasted a full 15 minutes. I really thought it had completely frozen.
Then it was done, and somehow the last Windows update freed up another 8Gb of hd space.

[wierd]

That sounds like you checked the "clear windows update cache" box on the cleanup wizard. That cleans up part of the winsxs folder.

(the purpose of the winsxs folder is fo backup files prior to installing updates and service packs so you can uninstall them, and so applications wanting older versions of system libraries can be given the versions they want when they load. it increases compatibility with older programs. Naturally, this folder grows to absolute monsterous sizes. That's why I offered info on how to turn ntfs compression on for it.  12GB is not unheard of for the size of this folder. System cleanup wizard removes temporary files used during the installation of a servicepack or windows update installation that are stored here. Sounds like your winsxs folder is huge, if another 8GB was freed.)

[martinuzz]

Well, this was the umpteenth windows update I've installed on this rig over the 4 years I have it (I tend to install them as soon as windows notifies me there is a new update), and I never saw anything like this. I also haven't changed any settings, like 'clear windows update cache'
Configuring windows after the update, and cleanup usually takes 20 seconds, not 10 minutes for the config plus 15 minutes for the cleanup.

I did look at the winsxs folder when I still had the no space left issue, then it was up to 12 Gb, which is indeed pretty large, but it was not the main culprit for hogging all space.
Looking at it now, it hasn't become smaller, it has actually grown to 13.7 Gb, even after windows update freed up 8Gb.