On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:39:53 -0400, "mazorj" <mazorj@xxxxxx>
wrote:
Quote:
>
> "Ken Blake, MVP" <kblake@xxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:2ceg359nm8pbhijq424bjukadk6cmfp34q@xxxxxx Quote:
> > On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:04:14 -0400, "mazorj" <mazorj@xxxxxx>
> > wrote:
> > Quote:
> >> In Vista 64 home premium SP1, in running chkdsk for C: at the end
> >> it states that there are 85,144,492 "total allocation units on
> >> disk"
> >> but the next line says there are 187,552 "allocation units
> >> available on disk". No disk errors were found.
> >>
> >> 1. What are allocation units and why are they there?
> >
> > Space is allocated on the disk in units called "clusters" or
> > "allocation units." If your drive is NTFS, the default size of
> > allocation units is 4KB. >
> Got it. Why didn't they just say "clusters"? Almost anyone from
> pre-Vista days knows what those are.
I'm with you here. Unless the old name is really terrible, I'm almost
against changing the name of anything. Doing so results in confusion.
Quote:
> ... Quote:
> > You apparently have a drive that's about 350GB in size. I got that
> > number by multiplying 85,144,492 by 4096. If you have 4K allocation
> > units the statements "you have 85,144,492 allocation units" and "you
> > have a 350GB drive" are equivalent.
>
> Close, the C: partition reports a usable size of 324 GB.
> Quote:
Quote:
> >> 2. Does this mean I'm running out of allocation units?
> >
> > No, not really. It means you are running out of disk space. >
> Yes! I just checked the drive on the Computer window. It was down to
> 1.4 Gig free space. No way!
>
> However, in a 6/12/09 post to the vista.general newsgroup ("Capturing
> scrolled command line text") I asked about this. The only reply
> addressed question #1 (capturing the boot scrolls) so I'll repeat the
> rest here (minus #1) in hopes that someone can address the bigger
> questions I posed:
>
> "...after the June 10 MS downloads, on reboot I
> saw something new to the effect that the OS could not resolve the
> following drives - each of which was named with one of those long
> gibberish filenames instead of drive letters. There were no error
> messages for existing lettered drives... So,
>
> "2. Does anyone know what's happening with these odd drive error
> messages and whether I need to worry about it? [And could this be
> a factor in the "disappearing" HD space on C:?]
>
> "3. After the downloads and reboot (not immediately but a few hours
> later), I started getting messages that my C: drive had zero available
> bytes. Explorer also reported zero available bytes and so did
> PowerDesk. Deleting files had no effect. Fortunately, the issue has
> disappeared for now after a cold boot but what was that all about?
> Anyone else get this after a recent batch of updates?"
>
> This time (tonight) a cold boot did *not* clear up the drive space
> issue. After some cleaning up, I'm still down to ~2.6 GB. Help!!!
>
> TIA for any help on these two questions.
>
> ... Quote:
> > If you delete files you don't need, or make some of them smaller,
> > you will use less disk space and therefore fewer allocation units.
>
> Prior to the onset of this problem, my HD was only about 1/3 full so
> whatever is eating up disk space all of a sudden is doing it at a
> prodigious rate - in days or even hours.
>
> Shadow files may be eating up some space, but what could possibly eat
> up 2/3 of a 324 GB HD in a few days???
Spyware infection. What anti-spyware programs do you use? Are they
kept up to date?
Quote:
> (It took more than a year for
> me to use up the first 1/3 of the HD space.) Even if it is shadow
> files, I'm reluctant to use the routine that deletes all but the last
> back-up/restore point because I may have to go further back than the
> last one. Why doesn't Vista allow selective deletion of just some
> of the previous restore points to free up space?
Because restore points are not complete. They build on their
predecessors. To use one, you also need previous ones.
Quote:
> Is there anything I can look for on the C: drive to delete WRT big
> back-up/restore files that may be the cause of filling my HD space?
>
> Or is my only hope to do the restore point prior to the 6/10/09 MS
> downloads and hope that cures it?
A restore point will not solve this problem; it essentially does very
little besides restoring the registry to a previous state. Look into
spyware, and also examine your drive very carefully looking at the
space used by each folder to see where the problem is.
--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
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