I have been experiencing a very disturbing and curious issue. Few days ago, I observed that I had only about 10% Hard DISK space left. So I deleted some files to free up more space. But afterwards, I noticed that the space I had freed up had seemingly been used up and the space left was now less than 8 per cent.
The summary of my problem here is that right now, there is only 8gig left out of 450gig. And this is after I have deleted almost 100gig worth of files.
FOR INSTANCE: Yesterday, I also deleted about 40gig worth of files. This freed up an extra 40gig worth of space. But after a few minutes, the computer was magically displaying only 16gig free space. And soon the 16gig became 8gig free space.
Right now, there's only about 11gig free space left and this is after I have deleted almost a hundred gig of important files.
I know that a rather obvious solution will be to transfer most of the files to an external HD but I do not own one and can't afford one now.
The system: HP 650
OS: Windows 8
HDD: Hitachi HTS545...
Size: 450gig
I only use the computer for music and surfing the internet since it's the only one I have.

I need to know what might be wrong here. Why gigbytes of space keeps being taken up. What might be using up the space. What I can do to remedy the situation and prevent further occurrence of this.
Thank you in advance for your counsel and contributions.

Title fixed by Andrew.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Sep 19, 2015

Use ccleaner (https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner) (it's free for private use) to check what is already obvious to delete. After that start to delete or move if it's necessary.
It could help. Many software use temporary files they never delete. ccleaner knows that and propose to delete them.

 

try defragging your hdd, I had a similar error a couple of months ago, a couple of defrags sorted it

I used Auslogics DiskDefrag, free and and was quick

 

Did you actually delete anything yourself or did you just let windows do it?

Try emptying the recycle folder, its called the recycle bin on your desktop.

 

Before using CCleaner (which is seriously useful) you could also try the following:
- Press windows-key + r, type cmd, press enter
- type RD /s/q "c:\windows\temp\" , press enter
- type RD /s/q "c:\users\XXX\appdata\local\temp\" , replace XXX with your user name, press enter

 

i've had a virus a few times that kept filling up my HD, would have 20g free and then nothing, free up some more space and then seeing it dissapear. you could try hitman pro, it had a free trial option and is one of the strongest detectors of malware/virusses

 

If you havnt already checked try: Clear system restore cache, system back up caches

 

Some suggestions:

• Try disabling windows updates,
• limit your restore points/recovery to N GB, delete checkpoints except your most recent point.
• Open resource monitor, click on the disk tab, sort by Total Bytes IO to see which app is using the most Disk
• Run a chkdisk (run cmd.exe, chkdsk C: /f (OK to schedule for next restart, and restart.)

 

Wow, these are all great ways to do what needs be done, and although I do not have this or a similar problem, it is just way incredibly cool that so many people have jumped into this conversation to help out a member with his/her strange computer behavior. So cool, so very cool.

 

When I would experience something like that, I find it really useful to have a visual overview about what data is where, free software like 'Sequoia View' or 'Tree Pie" and others offer such a view: http://alternativeto.net/software/treepie/

 

It sounds to me like it's a virus. Try malwarebytes or some similar software. If that shows nothing, I would suggest what boomoperator said. I use Treesize to find the largest files and folders on my HDD and decide what to do with them. Maybe you can discover where those tremendous amounts of memory are going. Once you have deleted, make sure to empty the recycle bin. Then defragment your entire HDD. Good luck

 

Sound like a duplicator object possibly (aka virus)...if it were my system I'd do a factory reset of sorts.

 

Thanks Guest Star. I have that software already and I have used it before posting this. It freed up several megabytes. But my trouble is with the inexplicably used up gigabytes.

 

Last edited: Sep 3, 2015

Thanks SS. Indeed I analyzed my Local Disk a few hours before posting this. It was 6per cent fragmented. I then tried to optimise it, not with an external software but using the windows inbuilt button for optimising. After several hours of the process, rather than fix the 6% fragmentation. It displayed that the disk is now 10% fragmented. I repeated the optimising process and at the end, the disk became 12% fragmented. It is presently 16% fragmented. A curious situation indeed! One that has got me scratching my scalp.
Thanks for the Auslogics software you suggested. I am presently downloading it. I shall install and run it and give you the report of the outcome.

 

Last edited: Sep 3, 2015

Try http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/ to find out where the space has gone...

 

Last changed Files
That program tells you the last changed files. So you can see what's going on in your hd.

 

Thanks for taking out the time to respond. I did as you suggested BigFLow and this is the response I got for the second process, copied and pasted from the cmd window:

C:\Windows\system32>RD/s/q "c:\users\XXX\appdata\local\temp"
c:\users\XXX\appdata\local\temp\~DFC04923881394C555.TMP - The process c
annot access the file because it is being used by another process.

Of course I replaced XXX with my username.

 

look that isn't a virus or something like that
Don't worry, just try to Use the following steps:

1. Quit all programs.
2. Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then press ENTER.
3. Type cipher /w: driveletter :\ foldername , and then press ENTER. Specify the drive and the folder that identifies the volume that contains the deleted data that you want to overwrite.

More iNFO : https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/315672

 

Gratitude Statik, I think your suspicion might be right. A few days ago, I found out that a program AvastUI was using almost a quarter of my CPU resources and causing the system to heat up. It was also around this time that my hard disk space began to magically disappear. Well I went online and read about the problem. I found that there were others who were experiencing the same issue with AvastUI but I couldn't find a comprehensive solution to the problem. So I resorted to uninstall Avast. My system did get slightly faster but has been unprotected since. I shall install a malware program at once and post the outcome here. Thanks for your opinion and the recommendation of Hitman pro.

 

Thanks MR Amine. I will try that and let you know the outcome.