indixing eating up HD space

**Momoman907** · April 15th, 2004, 07:10 AM

Here's one for you guys, and hopefully somebody here knows something I don't. Didn't realize I had left indexing on when I installed XP a year ago. I have 2 80 gig drives and lots of partitions. My C:\ drive is 15gig, only WinXP and small stuff like WinRar, etc installed on it. Now I added up what's installed, 5.1 gig, and Windows says I have 2 gig free. Do the math, you'll see the problem. Booting with Partition Magic and checking the drive. I found out that my missing free HD space is being used up by Windows Indexing. Now I have shut down the indexing service, deleted the cataologs, etc. I managed to retrieve I gig.

Any Gurus out there have an idea of what I should try next to acquire access to that 8 gig of space.

**NooNoo** · April 15th, 2004, 11:46 AM

Have a look at system restore next.... If thats been on for a year, you will have lots of restore points.

**Momoman907** · April 15th, 2004, 12:45 PM

Originally Posted by NooNoo

Have a look at system restore next.... If thats been on for a year, you will have lots of restore points.

Sorry, I should have mentioned that I have removed all but the most recent restore points as well. It's definitely an indexing issue. Just how to gain access to that space once again, this is the question.

**NooNoo** · April 15th, 2004, 01:46 PM

You have system and hidden files showing?

**Momoman907** · April 15th, 2004, 02:04 PM

Now I would be a total NEWB if I answered no to that. Of course I am displaying hidden and system files. Just not sure what file name or extension to look for. You see, this is the first time I failed to turn off indexing since my first install of Win2K, many , many moons ago.

**Ya_know** · April 15th, 2004, 02:13 PM

Alright, I am going to go out on a limb here, because I just don't understand what it is your are talking about. What Indexing are you refering to??? And what did you turn off?

Keep me in the loop here!

**Ya_know** · April 15th, 2004, 02:14 PM

Alright, I am seeing and Indexing service. Is that what you are talking about? Mine seems to be stopped, and set to manual by default...

**geoscomp** · April 15th, 2004, 04:03 PM

Usually indexing is on by default on XP..have you tried just defragging now that you have the indexing turned off?

**Momoman907** · April 15th, 2004, 04:57 PM

Don't take this wrong but how would defragging my drive return almost 8 gig of used space. There obviuosly has to be a file or folder holding a record. And by the way, I use DiskKeeper to defrag. I have also run Scandisk and every other Windows Utility including those that come with PM8.

**edball** · April 15th, 2004, 05:05 PM

I think it uses this.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d...c_fil_aixf.asp

**craigmodius** · April 15th, 2004, 07:30 PM

how about FolderSize a free program that gives a listing of how big each file and folder in a drive or directory is.

It's free and fast.

**craigmodius** · April 15th, 2004, 08:27 PM

If the FolderSize program doesn't point out any obvious problems. The other things I would consider are your swap file size. Binary vs. Decimal Capacities, and file system overhead...

Because space for file data can be allocated only in whole cluster amounts, even a 1-byte file uses a whole cluster's worth of disk space on a FAT volume.

(think of a 1 byte file on 512 bytes per sector hdd)

But these don't seem like they would add up to 9 gigs of a 15 gig drive, but combine them together...

is the drive fat32 or ntfs? got any Linux partitions etc?

**Momoman907** · April 16th, 2004, 08:02 AM

Originally Posted by craigmodius

If the FolderSize program doesn't point out any obvious problems. The other things I would consider are your swap file size. Binary vs. Decimal Capacities, and file system overhead...

(think of a 1 byte file on 512 bytes per sector hdd)

But these don't seem like they would add up to 9 gigs of a 15 gig drive, but combine them together...

is the drive fat32 or ntfs? got any Linux partitions etc?

Okay, I should mention that I work as a programmer and have been repairing computers since the 80's. This is just something I have never come across before other than turning it off during an install. Guess back when I did the install I had a "doh!" moment.

It's NTFS and I have already checked folder sizes, etc. DiskKeeper displays my missing free space as a big blotch of red fragmented files. Partition Magic 8 clearly states that I am using almost 9 gig for indexing. Indiexing has been turned off, catalogs deleted, drives defragged, and I have run ScanDisk as well. Note, I mentioned in my original post that C:\ only has WinXP and a few small utillities installed on it. And my swap file is reported as using 1.2 gig.

And I have been searching the MS knowledge base looking for answers. Guess just one more thing MS doesn't want us to know about.

**Ya_know** · April 16th, 2004, 08:19 AM

Or me. I still don't know what the F### you are talking about?

All my PC's log into a domain, Indexing is turned off by default on all of them (you are referring to the service right?). Is there something different when the PC is setup as a workgroup member, where it defaults on?

And how is it even possible that Indexing is causing your problem...oh, that's right, because PM told you so. Have you at least done a properties search to determine where the offending date is being stored. Manually checking properties for each folder until you find it, then drill into the folders and do the same until you locate what is taking up 8 gig of data?

I am so confused at this point???

**geoscomp** · April 16th, 2004, 08:45 AM

So you have a big bunch of fragmented files, and defrag didn't work. I assume since you are a programmer, you know to run defrag in safe mode with all unnecessary services turned off in order to access as many as possible locked files..and if defrag isnt defragmenting these files, the defrag report will tell you exactly what they are so you can delete them manually..

And when you ran chkdsk..(not scandisk in xp) you did it with the /f switch to force repairs

And you have cleaned out everything from the prefetch file

your swap file is really 1.2 gb?

btw, Ya-Know..I think he's referring to disk indexing..an xp service designed to speed up searches.