Where'd all my disc space go

[stolzy]

Against my better judgement I installed windows/VMware on my macbook a while ago, but never really used it.

I have a 5.58 GB partition comprising the following directories (all in C

Dell 237K
Desktop 21MB
Documents and settings 154MB
Intel 395KB
Programe files 483MB
Windows 2.45GB

There are also a few hidden directories only one of which has any files in it (.spotlight 42MB)

That sum comes up about 3GB short - where is the rest?

 

[shugie]

Against my better judgement I installed windows/VMware on my macbook a while ago, but never really used it.

I have a 5.58 GB partition comprising the following directories (all in C

Dell 237K
Desktop 21MB
Documents and settings 154MB
Intel 395KB
Programe files 483MB
Windows 2.45GB

There are also a few hidden directories only one of which has any files in it (.spotlight 42MB)

That sum comes up about 3GB short - where is the rest?

Are you "showing" system files and directories as well as hidden ones? Which version of Windows do you have?

Why do you think the 5.8GB partition is full? Is that from Windows disk properties?

How much RAM have you allocated in VMWare - some of the space might be being used by a windows paging file.

 

[stolzy]

Are you "showing" system files and directories as well as hidden ones?

Yep, all showing

Which version of Windows do you have?

XP SP2 updated recently.

Why do you think the 5.8GB partition is full? Is that from Windows disk properties?

Yes, and the "disk almost full messages"

How much RAM have you allocated in VMWare - some of the space might be being used by a windows paging file

Dunno, just took the defaults. The macbook has 4GB RAM

Thanks for chipping in

 

[cookie]

i couldn't say where your missing GBs have gone, but for info...

my VMware install of windows XP is 8.2GB, but i do have mapsource on it.

i stripped XP right back with nLite before install, which can make decent space savings. i found that as soon as you apply windows update, the whole thing bloats beyond all reason.

my install of windows does not have it's own partition, it's just a file in my documents folder. i can swap it around and use it with any mac running Fusion. have you used bootcamp as well?

 

[shugie]

Checked my XP sp2 virtual machine, not much in the way of apps, 5.8GB, so I guess you need to expand the disk size in VMWare then use something like partition manager to expand the partition size.

As Cookie says, windows does love to bloat, especially when you add service packs. You've done the disk cleanup I guess, that looses some of the rubbish.

 

[stolzy]

But the mystery of where the missing 3GB remains.
The vmware machine is on a bootcamp partition, so maybe I'll see how much disk space there is when I boot into windows.

Thanks for helping

 

[Clive]

What files are directly under C:\ ?

 

[stolzy]

What files are directly under C:\ ?

The directories listed in my first post - no files.

 

[ianf]

Could be restore points in xp, seen this on my xp vm in parallels a couple of times.

They hide in System Volume Information a hidden folder at the root of each drive. Although only supposed to be 10% or so of a drive, I think there's a minimum size and the small partition you have it's possibly pinched more.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/16685-35-restore-point-file-location-cleaning

For more info.

 

[shugie]

windirstat is a useful tool for seeing what files are where, temporary files seem to accumulate to a vast size over time.

 

[Clive]

The directories listed in my first post - no files.

Are you sure you are showing *all* file - system and hidden ones. There ought to be some files under C:\ visible if so. e.g. page file.