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General => Technical Help => Topic started by: Malcolm Bull on Tuesday 20 February 18 15:15 GMT (UK)
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A few months ago, I bought a new laptop with a solid-state hard drive (SSHD) and recently I noticed that the available free space on the drive had reduced drastically. Just by chance, I noticed that there was a folder with the letters PICASA in the name which held a lot of .JPG files. I do use Picasa, a lot, so with some trepidation, I deleted this folder (please, no warnings about the dangers of deleting unknown folders!), and the available space suddenly shot up by 20GB, without jeopardising the performance of Picasa. This situation existed for a couple of days, but now the available space has suddenly gone down by about 15GB again. The folder that I deleted has not reappeared, so I am now wondering what is going on and what to do.
Where can I look to solve this mystery? It is a feature of SSHD? of Picasa? of Windows 10?
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did you then go on to delete the files from the Windows 'ReCycle Bin' - Trash folder - I think the space it occupies (on the same disc) is still counted ?
SSDS usually reserve a few GiG for their own 'housekeeping' purposes - seeming like the drive is a tad smaller than advertised.
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Thanks. Yes, I clear my Recycle Bin regularly and frequently. I also use CCleaner.
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Picasa does not store your images, it is merely a large shortcut to your image files. It seems then that you have deleted all of the images.
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Thanks.
No. I did say that deleting this file did not jeopardise - "destroy it or cause it to fail" - Picasa. I probably would have noticed if all my images had gone.
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There are many freeware Windows applications that will analyse your disk and give you a pie chart or similar showing what is taking up space. Right click on disk for "properties" and see "disk cleanup" for other ways to free up unwanted file.
Read up at the SSD manufacturers website about any "hidden" or management space taken for the SSD.
As you will probably know, Picassa is deprecated, and out-of-support, replaced by Google Photos.
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2 years ago when I bought a new desktop computer with a 1000gb hard disk it filled up very quickly because the default Windows setting was to keep a backup copy of every file that was changed every time I changed it. The company I bought it from talk to me through how to disable this feature. Sadly it's so long ago that I can't remember what I did but it's something that you should look into.
Martin
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2 years ago when I bought a new desktop computer with a 1000gb hard disk it filled up very quickly because the default Windows setting was to keep a backup copy of every file that was changed every time I changed it. The company I bought it from talk to me through how to disable this feature. Sadly it's so long ago that I can't remember what I did but it's something that you should look into.
File History (Win8). It's in the Control Panel if you want to check your own settings.
Also, how much space is your System Restore set to? If you noticed a large number of GB disappearing quite quickly, it may have been taken by an automatic System Restore, although it wont go over the limit that has already been set.
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Thanks, everyone. That's given me lots to think about.
Malcolm
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There are a few housekeeping things which may help you narrow things down. No downloads needed, and these work on most versions of Windows.
First, run Disk Clean-up (under Windows Administrative Tools). That will tidy up the obvious places. The "System files" bit includes a tidying of Windows Update, which can take quite a bit.
To locate the folder hogging the space, use File Explorer (I use Windowskey E).
1. First turn on "Hidden files & folders". This can be found under View, Options - there is a tick box in the View tab of the dialog that brings up.
2. Browse to the root of the C: drive.
3. Select the first half of the visible folders.
4. Right-click and select Properties.
5. Windows adds up the sizes of all the files in the selected folders.
6. Repeat for the other half of the folders.
7. Narrow down the folder by selecting half of the "big" half.
8. Once you have found the offending folder, browse into it and repeat the process.
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2 years ago when I bought a new desktop computer with a 1000gb hard disk it filled up very quickly because the default Windows setting was to keep a backup copy of every file that was changed every time I changed it. The company I bought it from talk to me through how to disable this feature. Sadly it's so long ago that I can't remember what I did but it's something that you should look into.
Martin
.
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There are a few housekeeping things which may help you narrow things down. No downloads needed, and these work on most versions of Windows.
First, run Disk Clean-up (under Windows Administrative Tools). That will tidy up the obvious places. The "System files" bit includes a tidying of Windows Update, which can take quite a bit.
To locate the folder hogging the space, use File Explorer (I use Windowskey E).
1. First turn on "Hidden files & folders". This can be found under View, Options - there is a tick box in the View tab of the dialog that brings up.
2. Browse to the root of the C: drive.
3. Select the first half of the visible folders.
4. Right-click and select Properties.
5. Windows adds up the sizes of all the files in the selected folders.
6. Repeat for the other half of the folders.
7. Narrow down the folder by selecting half of the "big" half.
8. Once you have found the offending folder, browse into it and repeat the process.
Bit of a long-winded process when something like TreeSize Free will do the same thing for you. It will also include files such as the system hibernation file which File Explorer may not show by default.
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Thanks. I downloaded TreeSize and intend to play around with it at the weekend
Regards
PS (Friday morning) I took a look this morning and was able to free up over half the space on the SSHD. Amazing! and everything else seems to work OK. Thank you again