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Well, after about a week or so of struggling with my quickly evaporating hard drive space, I decided to do something about it. I went through all my Program Files and uninstalled everything I didn't use anymore, and deleted all of the shell folders that were left behind from previous installations. Everything went crisp and clean, and to my knowledge I didn't delete anything I needed.

The problem started when I compared the output from Disk Size Manager to my actual free space. Approximately 76,000 MB of hard drive space, approximately 6,000 MB free. DSM reported I had used 62,700 MB of disk space.

76,000 - 6,000 > 62,700. Where were the other 7 or so GB?

My first instinct was permissions. I quickly logged out and logged on as Administrator. Of course, my user account has Administrator access, so the 62,700 persisted.

Now, 6 GB is a lot of space to be honest. The problem is with NASCAR SimRacing wanting 4 GB for some ridiculous reason, and I still have about 5 GB left of CHDs to download for my full MAME collection. So I probably wouldn't have even dealt with it if I didn't have a need for the space.

Anyway, I did some searching around on Google and found a couple of possibilities. The one that worked for me was the System Restore option. Sure enough, I go in, and there it is taking up 10% - A full seven and a half gigs - of disk space. I move that down to 1%, reboot, and for the first time in months, I have double digit free space!

What annoys me the most about is is that, although Windows is reporting free space correctly, it's not reporting used space correctly. Where does Windows put the System Restore data if not on the C: drive? It's stupid.

Oh well, that's one problem licked. That's what matters.

Labels: Gaming, Hard Drives, MAME, NASCAR SimRacing, Servers