Vampire Sucks Life Out Of Drive
“Vampire Sucks Life Out Of Drive”
That’s the headline I would write for my 500 Gb hard drive.
I bought this machine a few months ago. And, within a month the 500 Gb hard drive was completely full. Now, I know I am something of a data hoarder. I keep everything, and I have a large number of video and audio files on my machine. Not to mention the development software I use. But, come on, really, 500 Gb in one month? How could that be? I would have to have been downloading day and night from multiple sources.
Well, I found it irritating, but didn’t really have time to look into it. I ran the system tools to clean things up, off loaded some of the media, and called it good to go. In a few days I had the same problem, a warning from the system to clear out some hard drive space.
Hey, what the *&%$ is going on? I just cleaned this up, the total memory of the media files are not that large. And, this is supposed to be my super-duper, excellent, smoking-fast system, able to run multiple apps with ease. What gives? I ran the system tools again, and started the hunt with wooden stake and silver bullet in hand. What could be doing this?
This was my first experience with running my own Vista machine. I’ve helped other folks setup or use theirs, but not used it myself. I intentionally bought it at a time when a free upgrade to Windows 7 was included in the package. I hadn’t received the upgrade yet, and I was tired of cleaning the system every few days.
After some time spent with the great oracle Rav Google, here is the Vampire cast of characters:
System Restore – He will suck your hard drive until there is nothing left.
His passion is the unrestrained consuming of memory. Look for him in the system properties dialogue on the System Protection tab. You can turn him off completely or set a limit to his thirst for your memory.
To turn off System Restore uncheck the box next to the drive and answer the dialogue “Turn System Restore Off”. This will turn it off and remove all restore files.
If you would rather try and control this beast, you can turn it back on and set the amount of memory it’s allowed to consume.
To do this navigate to the start menu, type cmd into the search box, but, don’t hit enter. When the cmd.exe file is found, right click on it and choose “Run as Administrator”. You have to have to run this as admin to get the next procedure to work.
In the command window type:
‘vssadmin list shadowstorage’ .
The result will display the amount of shadow storage used, the allocated amount, and the maximum shadow copy storage space allowed. I have mine set at 5 GB. That is very generous as one restore point should be about 300 mg.
To set the maximum shadow copy storage space type into the command window:
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=c /for=c /maxsize= 5gb
There is another way to clean up restore files; open Disk Cleanup from Start -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Cleanup. Or, type clean into the search and hit enter.
Disk Cleanup will look for files to clean up and then present you with its dialogue box.
Click the More Options tab and click the ‘Clean up…’ button, click yes, and all but the last restore point is gone.
To access more file types to clean up:
Type cmd into the search box, don’t click Enter. When the cmd executable comes up right click and choose ‘Run as Administrator’ from the context menu.
Select the drive you want to clean up. When the Disk Cleanup dialogue comes up you will notice a few more options of file types to clean up. Select the check boxes to clean up the files and click OK.
Your monster should now be under control.
Indexing – He’s such a lothario, lulling you into submission with his romantic charms, promising ease and speed. But, all the while he’s angling to get to your memory’s life blood.
Indexing is a great feature, but, it takes memory. Lots of memory depending on what you want indexed and how big your drive is. You have a couple of options, disable it all together or control it’s appetites.
To disable: Disabling indexing will slow searching down a bit, especially if you have large amounts of data on your drives. But, I have mine off and it’s not a big problem.
Type ‘service’ into search. Select the ‘Services’ entry. Look for the ‘Windows Search’ entry.
Right Click and select properties. In this dialogue you will select ‘Disable’.
Click through the acceptance dialogues and Indexing is disabled.
Try it for awhile with it disabled. If you decide you would like it back on:
At any file dialogue type into the search box and you will get a message that search is off and the question would you like to turn it on, just say yes.
To control: You can decide what you would like to have indexed. Here’s how:
Type index into the search box at the start menu and select ‘Indexing Options’.
The dialogue that comes up will allow you to choose file types from the ‘Advanced ‘ button and file locations from the ‘Modify’ button.
Open the Services dialogue Start -> Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Administrative Tools
Select Services.
In the Services dialogue
Super Fetch – As his name implies, he the HardDrive super villain. He has nearly the same capability as his evil over lord, but, can be contained with the correct settings.
Essentially, Super Fetch creates a cache of all applications, ever, that you ever opened, even once. It was a feature in Windows XP, it was PreFetch then. I didn’t like it then either. I disabled it in XP. You can disable it in Vista. If you do, applications will start up a little slower, but HardDrive will be spared.
To disable:
Type ‘service’ into the search at start and then right click on ‘Services’ and select ‘Run as Administrator’. When the services page comes up select Super Fetch->Properties-> Startup Type -> Disabled.
Then Stop the service.
Click OK and you’re done. To reclaim the disk space you will have to delete the files in
Windows/Prefetch/…
To re-enable the service, do the same, but select ‘Automatic’ as the Startup Type.
Temporary files – a potential cast of thousands, swelling like the ticks on your dog. Individually, their ability to reduce your computing power is not that great. But, they can band together and become a memory nightmare.
Temporary files are created every time you do something, anything, from surfing the web to creating a document, to installing or uninstalling an application. This is a good thing. It allows your system or applications to recover from a crash with your data intact. But, too much of a good thing is a memory hog.
The best control of temporary internet files is to run Disk Cleanup on a regular basis.
Another option is to do it yourself. In the search box under ‘Start’ type %temp% . This will open the temp folder and allow you to delete the files. Check your recycle bin after you delete the files, it may need emptying as well.
Recycle Bin Total Size – One of the lesser minions of the blood sucking system.
The Recycle Bin’s properties dialogue will allow you to change the default bin size to a custom size. This will prevent you from using the Recycle Bin as storage. If you set the custom size too small, you will get a warning every time you delete something telling you that the item to be deleted is too large and will have to be deleted completely. So, adjust the custom size as needed.
Cookies and Temp Internet Files – a necessary evil.
These rascals take up space on your drive and help you out when you are surfing the web. They may hold information about passwords or logons, caches of pages you have visited, or info about the last time you visited. They appear in the guise of the good guys. And for the most part they are. But, let to many of them pile up around you and you can be lost in a sea of cookies. The best way to tame the cookie monster is to regularly run disk clean up and to run the clean up service in your browser of choice.
Internet Explorer 8 – Tools -> Delete Browsing History… opens a dialogue where you can select the internet files to delete.
Safari -> Edit -> Preferences. Choose the Security tab. On the Security Tab click the ‘Show Cookies’ button. From the dialogue you can select the cookies to remove or remove all cookies.
FireFox – Tools -> Clear Recent History. In the dialogue ‘details’ will allow you to select what to delete. Select ‘Time Range To Clear’, click the ‘Clear Now’ button.
Google Chrome – Select the tools icon in the upper right corner, the wrench. In the list select ‘Clear Browsing Data…’ .The box that opens gives you the opportunity to select what you want to delete and what time range.
One final note, every time an update occurs to the system, many of the settings are reset. You may have to go through the procedures to find which ones have been turned back on and which have not. Also, disc cleanup won’t delete all of your temp files. You will have to go in and manually delete them as I have described to get them all.
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