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Windows Vista Appdata folder and disk space

Discussion in 'Legacy Windows' started by sonar1313, 2012/05/28.

  1. 2012/05/28
    sonar1313

    sonar1313 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    OK, here's the thing: Over the past year or so I've noticed my hard drive space disappearing faster than it should. I assumed it was due to what I was saving (movies and such, large files) but with only about 50 gigs left on a 500-gig hard drive I needed to get to the bottom of it, maybe clear out some old stuff. I did a sort of cursory check through all the folders on the drive (that I knew of) and it didn't add up at all to the 400+ gigs of used space. First thought: defrag the hard drive. So I did, but it cleared up maybe 1.5 gigs. Not useful.

    The truth is, as I've lately realized, hard drive space is getting eaten up way faster than it should be. For example, when I defragged the hard drive on Saturday, I was left with 54.5 gigs of free space. Today is Monday and I have 53.6. There's no way I've saved a gig worth of stuff to the drive since then. A few megs at most.

    So next I downloaded and ran Auslogic's BoostSpeed and ran "explore disks." It tells me that there are a solid 200 gigs(!!!) worth of stuff in the location: Users --> (me) --> AppData --> Local --> Microsoft --> Windows --> Temp.

    Within that folder, the scan tells me, are a number of folders with random letter-number combination names, the largest of which is about 140(!!) gigs, and another with about 40 gigs. Unfortunately, when I explore through to the above "Windows" folder, I cannot see this "Temp" folder, even though I have selected the ability to see hidden files and folders.

    I am sure there is far more in there than there is "supposed" to be. When I right-click and select Properties for all the folders that I can see, the total file size isn't more than about 250 megs. But when I do the same for the "Windows" folder, well, it's still adding up the total as I type. It's blown past 6 gigs, although at the rate it's counting I won't learn the total til Thursday.

    So I guess the questions are: what the heck is in there, why can't I see it, can I get rid of it, what happens if I do, and how do I do that if I can't see it? I would've liked to use the BoostSpeed program to see what's in those folders, but unfortunately clicking on the largest one froze up the program, so now I've gotta run the (16-hour) scan again if I want to see it that way.

    EDIT: should add also that I tried to search for the folders with the random letter-number combos and came up empty. The search function will not find them.
     
    Last edited: 2012/05/28
  2. 2012/05/29
    dnmacleod

    dnmacleod Well-Known Member

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    You can start by clearing out your Temp files using TFC.

    TFC should be run regularly in any case. Its a pretty straigtforward tool.
     

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  4. 2012/05/29
    Arie

    Arie Administrator Administrator Staff

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    Arie,
    #3
  5. 2012/05/29
    Evan Omo

    Evan Omo Computer Support Technician Staff

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    Hi sonar1313. Using the built in Windows Disk Cleanup tool is also good way to free up disk space, especially when you can use the utility to delete old system restore points which after a while do end up taking up a lot of disk space.

    Adding to what Don said, I also use CCleaner to free up harddrive space as well as ATF Cleaner.

    The portable version of CCleaner and ATF Cleaner require no installation so you can definitely run those programs to reclaim some disk space.
     
  6. 2012/05/30
    sonar1313

    sonar1313 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    Thanks for the help everyone. I attempted the fix listed in the article and was able to delete the folder, but oddly it only cleared up a few megs. I probably missed something along the way. Right now my computer is running CCleaner, and though it is a very slow process (in about 12 hours it cleared up about 25 gigs in about 750,000 (yikes!) files) I think it will eventually have the problem under control. I'm typing this from my work computer, when I get home I will see what kind of progress it's made and expect another 25 or so gigs to have disappeared.
     
  7. 2012/05/30
    dnmacleod

    dnmacleod Well-Known Member

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    I've found that TFC is MUCH quicker than CCleaner.

    CCleaner is a good tool and I use it a lot so I'm not knocking it but for clearing out temp folders TFC is much faster and it clears more junk out of the temp folders too.
     
  8. 2012/06/03
    mattman

    mattman Inactive Alumni

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    Any update?

    I don't have a
    Users --> (me) --> AppData --> Local --> Microsoft --> Windows --> Temp
    folder, but I do have a
    Users --> (me) --> AppData --> Local --> Microsoft --> Windows --> Temporary Internet Files
    folder.

    You might have installed a program that is incompatible with Vista.

    Matt
     
  9. 2012/06/03
    sonar1313

    sonar1313 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    Update: The folder is now good and cleaned out.

    I have 200+ free gigs of space that weren't there before.

    I probably mistyped the folder name, what mattman typed is the correct one. At any rate, the suggested programs worked to get rid of the unnecessary junk.

    I still don't know what all that stuff was, but who cares. It's gone and I have space on my hard drive again and things run quite a bit faster. The computer scan that once took 16 hours now takes 10 minutes.

    Thanks to everyone.
     
  10. 2012/06/03
    Evan Omo

    Evan Omo Computer Support Technician Staff

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    Thanks for the update. :)
     

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