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Geek Culture / Sudden loss of storage space

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DeadTomGC
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Posted: 4th Nov 2012 06:19
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I was editing some videos just a bit ago when a message popped up that said that I only had a MB's of space left on the C drive. This seems impossible. I had 80GBs just a few minutes ago.

I've done some clean up, but I still don't know what happened and the space is still missing.

Does anyone know what could have happened and how I could fix it?


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mr_d
DBPro Tool Maker
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Posted: 4th Nov 2012 07:33
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video files are notorious for taking up a lot of space, particularly if you are playing around with uncompressed files which can gobble up space very quickly, so that 80GB can be used for maybe an hour to hour and a half of video.

I would run a file search on your c drive for any files created within the time period that you were editing and see if they show up in either your temp area or under your video software working folder.

You can usually change this to be another drive, which I would recommend you think about implementing, maybe one specifically reserved for this purpose. happy hunting. cheers.

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Phaelax
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Posted: 4th Nov 2012 08:17
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There's probably very large temp files as well. I've had photoshop take up several gigs before on my system, on top of the 8GB of ram it was using. And that's just for images!

"You're not going crazy. You're going sane in a crazy world!" ~Tick
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DeadTomGC
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Posted: 4th Nov 2012 10:23
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I wiped my temp files using ccleaner. I'm going to look around for more of them though.


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Dazzag
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Posted: 4th Nov 2012 12:09 Edited at: 4th Nov 2012 12:10
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Use SequoiaView. It's awesome for getting an easy to use visual of your hard drive. Discovered it years ago and I still find it the best way to quickly track down where large files are being stored.

For instance a while back I had a similar thought to you with a load of space disappearing and it turned out it was from a program I used to make my 1080p wedding video compatible with the PS3. It all worked fine and I moved the rather large file to my PS3, removing it from the PC. But it turned out the program I used had created a number of copies of it in a *temporary* (read permanent esp after a few months of it not being removed or anything) directory. I think it was because I was fiddling with the settings a few times. This resulted in over 100gb of data being used up for no real reason. SequoiaView highlighted it really easily (you just look for big blocks in it's display).

Here is a screenshot of my current PC to give you a better idea.



Cheers

Current fave quote : Cause you like musicians and I like people with boobs.

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Poloflece
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Posted: 4th Nov 2012 13:06
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I had/am having the same problem, went from 5gb to 28mb without installing anything, I would clear my temp which is taking up loads of space but guess what Charlie, your temp is corrupt, hooray!

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Green Gandalf
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Playing: Malevolence:Sword of Ahkranox, Skyrim, Civ6.
Posted: 4th Nov 2012 13:36
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Watch out for automatic windows restore points too - on this machine I was losing 4GB a week till I realised what was happening.

But, yes, video files can be huge. I took a few short ones of my grandson climbing a rock wall and was amazed to find they added up to 2GB - and 4GB after I'd created edited versions rotated the right way. The longest was only 2.5 minutes long so I can see how 80GB can disappear quickly.
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The Nerevar
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Posted: 4th Nov 2012 13:45
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Maybe you should get another hard drive, but have it be a Terra-byte, instead of a few Giga-bytes. Plus you'll have more space for other things.

Fulfilling the Nerevarine Prophecy, one trial at a time, because I... Am... The Nerevar!
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thenerd
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Posted: 4th Nov 2012 14:54
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On Battlefield 2 on my pc, when FRAPS is running it would trigger somehow and record constantly. Not sure if that's a feature or bug, but I didn't discover it for quite some time.. until it filled up my external hard drive Anyway that's certainly not your problem but if you are doing anything with video it can take up a huge amount of space like everyone's said.

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BatVink
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Posted: 4th Nov 2012 15:00
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Quote: "Use SequoiaView"


You said that one week too late. I used this for years and when I tried to remember it last week, it had left my mind completely. I ended up using an inferior disk analyser.

Sequoiaview is briliant, it just makes sense of everything instantly.

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Sergey K
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Posted: 4th Nov 2012 15:41
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if you exporting your videos under the HighQuality and WRONG video codec formats, you can create video that more than 80GB with playtime of 5 minuts.

so my suggestion is using MKV format in case of 1080/720p (Xvid 4 i think) or mp4 if less than 720p.

Advanced Updater for your games!
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Dazzag
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Posted: 4th Nov 2012 16:28
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Quote: "I used this for years and when I tried to remember it last week, it had left my mind completely"
Yeah same thing happened with me. I hadn't used it in yonks and couldn't remember what it was called to download it again. I Googled about a dozen different things before I found it. Hard drive analysis etc didn't work, and eventually got it with variations of words like "sequetia" and "sezenquia".

Cheers

Current fave quote : Cause you like musicians and I like people with boobs.
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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 4th Nov 2012 23:51
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Where did you find it? The only sites I've found require you to download something else first.
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Diggsey
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Posted: 5th Nov 2012 01:15
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There's also WinDirStat which is quite similar to SequoiaView.

[b]
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BlackFox
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Posted: 5th Nov 2012 01:48
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Quote: "Where did you find it? The only sites I've found require you to download something else first."


@ Green Gandalf

If you are referring to SequoiaView, it is here. Info page is here.


There's no problem that can't be solved without applying a little scripting.
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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 5th Nov 2012 01:59
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@BlackFox

I tried a link similar to that on a couple of sites and they were either broken or required other dubious software to be downloaded first. Your link worked fine. Cheers.
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Phaelax
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Posted: 6th Nov 2012 03:26
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Quote: "Sequoiaview is briliant, it just makes sense of everything instantly."


Really? Cause looking at Dazzag's screenshot I can't tell what the heck it is

"You're not going crazy. You're going sane in a crazy world!" ~Tick
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DeadTomGC
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Posted: 6th Nov 2012 07:06 Edited at: 6th Nov 2012 07:11
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Ok, thank you all for the helpful suggestions so far.

However, I haven't gotten this worked out yet.

Here is some info, I got the size of all the files on the drive. they add up to 271GBs.

However, the computer says that nearly 400Gbs are used up. That... is a big difference....


EDIT:

Just found that my program data folder is 102Gbs in size...
Damn...

EDIT2:

HA!, nailed it! That video editing software was taking up 100GBs of that 102.


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Dazzag
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Posted: 6th Nov 2012 08:14
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Quote: "Really? Cause looking at Dazzag's screenshot I can't tell what the heck it is"
Every rectangle is a file, sized for how big it is, and the screen is your whole drive. This allows you to quickly see where the big files are (by clicking on each big rectangle). Really really brilliant.

Quote: "There's also WinDirStat which is quite similar to SequoiaView"
I just installed it, and while initially it looked like an upgraded version to SequoiaView, it keeps crashing on Win7

Quote: "HA!, nailed it! That video editing software was taking up 100GBs of that 102"
Video editing software always seems to be rubbish with garbage collection.

Cheers

Current fave quote : Cause you like musicians and I like people with boobs.
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Benjamin
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Posted: 6th Nov 2012 11:12
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SpaceMonger anyone?

You're signature has been erased by a mod
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BatVink
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Location: Gods own County, UK
Posted: 6th Nov 2012 11:31
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Quote: "eventually got it with variations of words like "sequetia""


I have to make an app called Sequetia. I don't know what it will do yet, but the name is so good it deserves to have an app made for it.

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Dazzag
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Posted: 6th Nov 2012 14:23
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Quote: "I have to make an app called Sequetia"
I must admit it does have a certain ring to it. Either a puzzler or something very dark with lots of rain in it...

Cheers

Current fave quote : Cause you like musicians and I like people with boobs.
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