Hard Drive SOLUTION!!!

[kresta]

Yyaaaaayyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited to currently have 162 GB free on my hard drive!!

I had our tech guy come to look at my computer today to figure out why in the world I was down to so little space. I have seriously been down to like 1 GB or less out of 221 GB the past few days.

He worked on it quite a while, then finally found what was wrong. He said it's something called Volume Shadow Copy, or something like that, I think. Anyway, apparently it's something on Vista. It's a program that makes additional copies everything you download. You can see how it would quickly eat up all of your hard drive space. Well, you can limit the size of the catalog of copies it keeps. He set it to 15 GB and then let it get rid of all the rest that it had saved and it worked!

So if you have Vista and are having hard drive problems like I did (and I know a number of you have mentioned it on here), you'll want to look into this. He said something about a DOS prompt or something, so I'm not sure of the details of how to fix it; but at least I can tell you what to look for.

Hope this helps some of you!

[rochelle789]

Oh, this is a lifesaver! I'm having HD space issues too and for the life of me, couldn't figure out why!

I'm a Vista hater, and this is just one more reason why!

But thank you!!! :)

[rochelle789]

OK, I've been reading more about this, and while I can certainly see the value in a function like this, it sure is inconvenient for the average user who has no clue it even exists!! Ugh.

[wvasweetness]

Oh, glad you got it fixed!!

[Jennilyn]

Here's (http://www.howtohaven.com/system/turn-off-volume-shadow-copy-vista.shtml) how to take the shadowing off. Just be warned though that if you turn it off, it also turns off System Restore.

[Leah]

So you can't get rid of one without getting rid of the other?

Is it essential to have system restore?

[Nettio]

Yay!! So glad you got it figured out! I thought it had to be something like that because I had the same thing happen to me with Norton Ghost but I had no idea what to specifically suggest with Vista.

One of my huge pet peeves is software that tries to "help" without telling you it's doing it. It usually just creates more problems. :thumbdown:

Yyaaaaayyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited to currently have 162 GB free on my hard drive!!

I had our tech guy come to look at my computer today to figure out why in the world I was down to so little space. I have seriously been down to like 1 GB or less out of 221 GB the past few days.

He worked on it quite a while, then finally found what was wrong. He said it's something called Volume Shadow Copy, or something like that, I think. Anyway, apparently it's something on Vista. It's a program that makes additional copies everything you download. You can see how it would quickly eat up all of your hard drive space. Well, you can limit the size of the catalog of copies it keeps. He set it to 15 GB and then let it get rid of all the rest that it had saved and it worked!

So if you have Vista and are having hard drive problems like I did (and I know a number of you have mentioned it on here), you'll want to look into this. He said something about a DOS prompt or something, so I'm not sure of the details of how to fix it; but at least I can tell you what to look for.

Hope this helps some of you!

[Shawna]

Glad you found a solution Kresta! I think I have the same issue on my PC cause I'm down to not very much space either and I have a 500gb hard drive and a 640gb EHD and it's saying I'm down to 10gb of space on my HD and I know I should have a lot more free space than that!

I Googled and found this info on how to reduce it rather than turn it completely off -
http://www.wikihow.com/Reduce-Shadow-Copy-on-Windows-Vista

[joelsgirl]

That sounds great...except turning off System Restore especially since my DH just had to run System Restore on his computer like last week! I never have, but I don't know that I feel comfortable without it. What's the word?

[Kat Stokes]

Thank you for posting this!!!

Shawna, I followed those instructions and reduced mine from 10GB to 2GB. I hope this helps!!!

[kscwgirl]

Thank you SO much!!!!!!!!! I went from about 6 gb to 22 gb. :)

[rachaelsscraps]

I'll definitely try that! Somehow I'm already most of my 285 GB harddrive- so I betcha that's why. I don't keep much of anything on my computer itself! Thanks for the info, that's definitely great to know! :)

[emmasmommy]

WOW! Thank you SO much!

[rachaelsscraps]

HOLY Smokes!!! Mine was using 45GB! I reduced it to 5GB so I saved 40! Wow! Thanks for that link on reducing it!!!

Now, do you all know about this other way to free up some space:
accessoried<system tools< disk cleanup

That cleared out another 5GB of my harddrive by removing thumbnails and crap I don't need.

[Stacey42]

Mine was using 68GB! Ithink that was the Geek Squads doing because I rememeber them asking me about how much stuff I downloaded regularly when I was gettting them to set up my laptop. I knocked it down to 3GB.

[kresta]

Woot! So glad this is helping all of you!

(Since it was to all of our benefit, anyone want to help pay the tech bill?? LOL!!! - totally kidding! Hubby will pay it. :-> )

[mummytothree]

mine was only using 19GB which wasn't too bad and even thought I still had like 96GB free i still went ahead and reduced it down to 3GB. I only keep current CT kits on my laptop once I scrap with them I transfer them to my desktop for backup/storage so really that 19GB wasn't hurting me!!!

[joelsgirl]

Man, mine was only using 3 GB of hard drive space, but I have a really small hard drive anyway. :( My next computer is going to be cool like Nikki's.