What the hell is this?

Discussion in 'Technology' started by Armadeadn, Jan 18, 2012.

  1. #1 Armadeadn, Jan 18, 2012
    I'm trying to see where all my hard disc space is going and I found a program called Treesize which shows you where the space is being allocated. I found a couple of files that are about 2.5gb each but have no idea what they are, I'm guessing some of you guys will know.

    What the hell is this? (also can I delete it?)

    [​IMG]

    On a side note. Do I need to keep windows.old on my computer? What purpose does it serve?
     
  2. #2 Grim, Jan 18, 2012
    This is a common question. I think by default Windows uses 12% of your HDD to create restore points (backups) so that if things go wrong you can restore. That is where all your space is going and things in Sysvol are going to be these files.
     
  3. #3 Armadeadn, Jan 18, 2012
    Ah ok thanks. What about the windows.old folder I have? I sure could do with that 27gb of space.
     
  4. #4 Grim, Jan 18, 2012
    Use disk cleanup, I assume you did an upgrade as that is stuff from your previous Windows version.

    Here is a nice little walk through for you.

    http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/How-do-I-remove-the-Windows-old-folder
     
  5. #5 Armadeadn, Jan 18, 2012
    Yeah this laptop came with vista but I put 7 on it back in 2010, I'll give that a go thanks.
     
  6. #6 cmdrmonkey, Jan 18, 2012
    This kind of thing is why you always format and do a clean install.
     
  7. #7 Armadeadn, Jan 18, 2012
    Nice. I just made about 28gb of space.
     
  8. #8 Grim, Jan 18, 2012
    Was you running out of space or something?

    I just noticed you have a HP Laserjet P4010 series printer installed, you use a Laserjet at home or do you take your laptop to work and connect it there? Those things cost about £700-£800* ex VAT for the base models and aren't exactly cheap to run when you consider repair/maintenance costs etc.

    *based on P4015
     
  9. #9 Armadeadn, Jan 18, 2012
    Yeah I was down to less than 20gb. A large chunk is videos of San Andreas I recorded using fraps that IO haven't gotten around to publishing and uploading yet, many of them are almost 4gb and there's more than a dozen of them. I now have 61gb free.

    I spotted the printer in the list also. I don't own a printer so I don't know why that's there. This was my Dad's old laptop before he downgraded to a netbook so I'm thinking he must have had it set up at some point. It's only 18mb, almost not worth deleting it lol.
     
  10. #10 bfun, Jan 22, 2012
    You could probably get rid of one of those back-up files as well. I turn that feature off on my system. That's probably a bad idea but oh well.