Drive C constantly shifting disk capacity

H

hcdgo2

New Member
it started just 2 days ago and my C:// still has some around 18 GB out of ~220GB disk space but suddenly the computer notified me that I have a low disk space and I have to manage and delete files. then I tried to delete some files and immediately removed them from the recycling bin and then the problem started.

my drive C suddenly shifts its memory space from around 43GB down to at least 600MB then it slowly adds up again to 43GB. i notice the shifts because I try to refresh the My Computer page and it really does diminishes or adds up 0.1GB each second i refresh.

Please help me. My computer processes has been acting slowly ever since.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP G50

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dell XPS420
    Memory
    6 gig
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI Radeon HD3650 256 MB
    Sound Card
    Intergrated 7.1 Channel Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dell SP2009W 20 inch Flat Panel w Webcam
    Hard Drives
    640 gb
    Cooling
    Fan
    Keyboard
    Dell USB
    Mouse
    Dell USB 4 button optical
    Other Info
    DSL provided by ATT
My guess would be that you see a very active shadowstorage. Especially during early days the shadowstorage can play an act on you. Have a look what you got. Open an elevated Command Prompt and type:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

Then hit Enter. The Allocated number is the amount of disk space that is currently occupied by shadows (restore points). The Maximum is what it will eventually take. In Vista that is usually 15% of the size of the disk. But you can reduce that. Just figure that each shadow will take between 500MB to 1GB. The command for setting the shadowstorage is:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /for=C: /maxsize=xxGB

Where xx is the size of GBs you want to set it. Note that the minimum is 300MB. It is important that you put MB or GB at the end because else the system assumes bytes and you will have a mess.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dell
    CPU
    Q6600
    Memory
    4GB
    Monitor(s) Displays
    HP w2207h
    Hard Drives
    2x250GB HDDs
    1x60GB OCZ SSD
    6 external disks 60 to 640GBs
    Other Info
    Also 1xHP desktop, 1xHP laptop, 1xGateway laptop
whs said:
My guess would be that you see a very active shadowstorage. Especially during early days the shadowstorage can play an act on you. Have a look what you got. Open an elevated Command Prompt and type:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

Then hit Enter. The Allocated number is the amount of disk space that is currently occupied by shadows (restore points). The Maximum is what it will eventually take. In Vista that is usually 15% of the size of the disk. But you can reduce that. Just figure that each shadow will take between 500MB to 1GB. The command for setting the shadowstorage is:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /for=C: /maxsize=xxGB

Where xx is the size of GBs you want to set it. Note that the minimum is 300MB. It is important that you put MB or GB at the end because else the system assumes bytes and you will have a mess.
Click to expand...

___________________________________________________

I tried to do what you said but when I hit enter to on vssadmin list shadowstorage, it says "No available information on query"
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP G50

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dell XPS420
    Memory
    6 gig
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI Radeon HD3650 256 MB
    Sound Card
    Intergrated 7.1 Channel Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dell SP2009W 20 inch Flat Panel w Webcam
    Hard Drives
    640 gb
    Cooling
    Fan
    Keyboard
    Dell USB
    Mouse
    Dell USB 4 button optical
    Other Info
    DSL provided by ATT
Did you run vssadmin in an elevated cmd (run as admin)?
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dell
    CPU
    Q6600
    Memory
    4GB
    Monitor(s) Displays
    HP w2207h
    Hard Drives
    2x250GB HDDs
    1x60GB OCZ SSD
    6 external disks 60 to 640GBs
    Other Info
    Also 1xHP desktop, 1xHP laptop, 1xGateway laptop
If you are trying to run with only about 8% free space on the system drive I don't think you'll get it to stabilize. You should either park some data on another drive or delete a bunch of stuff. I try to run my system partition at about 70% free space. It makes things a lot easier and smoother. Qucky defrags are very quick.

With so little free space your OS message queues are overloading and even dropping messages while waiting for the HD head to jump around. It's a waste of time trying to tune it like that.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP Pavilion m9515y
    CPU
    Phenom X4 9850
    Memory
    8 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Some Radeon Cheapie with 512 MB Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    CRT
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    750 GB SATA 3G
    2 SIIG Superspeed docks w/WD Caviar Black Sata II or III
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