Sudden loss of space on hard drive

[hzpurple]

Hiya, I'm very much a rookie, here is my querie: I consistantly had around 40% of free space on my C drive, when I checked it a few minutes ago, there was only around 10%...I haven't added any new software or large files, pics, etc. I use disk cleanup, webwasher, disk defragment. Any ideas why my free space has dropped so dramatically? Thanks. -John (hzpurple@aol.com)

[trev]

I've tried that one, I think. It's probably a virus/worms/trojan horses.

[dancity]

sounds like a definetly virus to me. I cant remember the name of it. All i know is it makes your hard drive full by making the infected files appear larger.

[hzpurple]

Any idea what I can do about it? Thannks. in advance. -John (hzpurple@aol.com)

[Jono]

run a updated virus scanner or reformat and re-install if it is the virus i read about it is very difficult to clean up after (sorry cant remember name of virus)

[pkk]

swap ???

[Jono]

as far as i am aware swap only affected floppies and was around in 1998 so is unlikely to work under xp.

[R600]

sounds like a definetly virus to me. I cant remember the name of it. All i know is it makes your hard drive full by making the infected files appear larger.

Do Form virii still exist? Thought they got wiped out years ago.

I remember back in the dayz when floppy were the main media to use. A Form virus comes along and sits on my floppy doing nothing but occupy 400kb of disk space.

[trev]

I suggest you use an anti-virus program to scan your system for viruses. A virus must be in your computer if you have a sudden loss of space on your hard drive.

[hzpurple]

Well, I've subscribed to MaAfee....after about 20 minutes of scanning through every file on my PC, it comes up clean. However, when I do disk defragment, there is a HUGE section of red (fragmented files) that didn't used to be there. I'm tempted to reformat but don't have much confidence in my ability to re-install everything (Limewire & all the XP updates). I have/had backup on Zip disks but when I went to backup today, there was obviously the corrupted stuff there and it was going to take MANY disks instead of the two ZIP 250's required previously. Now, my backup disks are in disaray because of this latest attempt. Any ideas on something I can buy, download, that might fix the problem w/out reformating? This is a little much for an obsessive, anal-retentive type as myself!

[barradasba]

http://www.digallery.com/diskdata/

DISKdata is a powerful explorer-like application for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP that analyzes disk space utilization. Selecting a disk volume or folder displays a summary of its contents in report or chart format. Statistics include file/folder actual size, allocated size, storage efficiency, storage slice, modification date, attributes, extension and version information

[jrzycrim]

I had this same problem a few months ago. It was after I ran bootvis. After I exited bootvis, somehow the trace logging was left on. It would continuosly write to a log file and slowly eat up HD space. Unistalled it to fix the problem

Not saying that's the problem in this case. However, if you can't find a virus, the next place to look is a background task that is writing to a log file.

It was a real pain in the a** to find. There were no mysterious tasks running. I had to start at the root of my drive and monitor each directory for size changes and then work my way to where the log file resided.

Cheers,

[Subcodec]

I would just put in a search for files over a certain size. Let's say about 5000k. If you have one or more unusually large file, they may be the culprit. Find where they are located and only delete them if you are sure. If you are not sure, post the list of files on here and I'm sure someone will be able to tell you if you need the files or not.

Subcodec