I cant account for ~12gb of my 80gb SSD C drive

EdwardTeach · 13 Oct 2010 at 00:02

I have an 80gb ssd, which i use as my boot drive. It has windows 7, office & 1 game (GTA IV)

I have a few more hd's which handle the rest of my storage.

I checked the capacity of my SSD was surprised at how much of the space is used up.

Apparently I have used 65.9gb out of a capacity of 74.4.

That seemed rather high to me so I checked every folder and came up with a figure of 54.5gb. Therefore I cant account for ~ 12gb of my precious SSD.

e.g the only folders in excess of a gb are:

Program files (x86) 20.8gb
Program data 2.56gb
Users 12.9gb
Windows 16.9gb

Anyone got any idea what is going on here?

should I be concerned? (i am!)

Before anyone asks the hd has been regularly scanned for virus. I am currently using comodo and MSE.

Mattus · 13 Oct 2010 at 00:12

Do you have a pagefile and a hibernation file on the SSD? Both of those will be the same size as the installed RAM by default, so on your system they would occupy 12GB in total.

If you don't have hibernation enabled, it could also be the pagefile and system restore files.

EdwardTeach · 13 Oct 2010 at 00:29

Thanks for the reply.

I am guessing you are probably right - how can I check?

How come I cant see them when I check the files and folders on the C drive?

Would it be advisable to move any of this onto another HD? (i.e are there any drawbacks to moving them off my SSD?)

Mattus · 13 Oct 2010 at 00:39

EdwardTeach said:
How come I cant see them when I check the files and folders on the C drive?

Because they're hidden from view by default, to prevent people deleting them by accident

I am guessing you are probably right - how can I check?

Go to Control Panel > Folder Options. On the 'View' tab, select 'show hidden files' and deselect 'hide protected operating system files'. If the files are present, you should now be able to see 'pagefile.sys' and 'hiberfil.sys' in the root of the drive. (Don't delete or move them manually!)

Would it be advisable to move any of this onto another HD? (i.e are there any drawbacks to moving them off my SSD?)

It's probably best to keep the page file on the SSD - moving it to a mechanical drive could slow the system down.

If you don't use the hibernation function, you can safely turn it off completely - which will get rid of the file. Open a command prompt as an administrator and type 'powercfg -h off'.

SiriusB · 13 Oct 2010 at 00:50

Use WinDirStat. It will give you a graphical break-down of all the files/folders on your SSD. The bigger the coloured box, the bigger the file.

I imagine it is either the hiberfil.sys or pagefile.sys taking up the room.

As above, leave the Page File on the SSD as that's the best place for it.

EdwardTeach · 13 Oct 2010 at 00:55

Mattus said:
Because they're hidden from view by default, to prevent people deleting them by accident

Go to Control Panel > Folder Options. On the 'View' tab, select 'show hidden files' and deselect 'hide protected operating system files'. If the files are present, you should now be able to see 'pagefile.sys' and 'hiberfil.sys' in the root of the drive. (Don't delete or move them manually!)

It's probably best to keep the page file on the SSD - moving it to a mechanical drive could slow the system down.

If you don't use the hibernation function, you can safely turn it off completely - which will get rid of the file. Open a command prompt as an administrator and type 'powercfg -h off'.

Thanks for your advice the files were as you suggested.

I am presuming hibernate is the sleep function? if so i do use that.

edit - I am using a desktop not a laptop, does this mean i do not ever use hibernate?

UnworthyBean · 13 Oct 2010 at 01:08

EdwardTeach said:
Thanks for your advice the files were as you suggested.

I am presuming hibernate is the sleep function? if so i do use that.

edit - I am using a desktop not a laptop, does this mean i do not ever use hibernate?

hibernate will save everything to the hard drive and completely turn off the pc. This means that everything you were doing will resume when you turn on your pc again.

Sleep mode just puts it into a low power state, keeping everything in the ram. This means that if you lose power, everythings gone, but it also boots up a lot faster.

You may well be using hibernate, but the chances are sleep will be the one youre using, and more than sufficient.