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Well this can't be good...

MMike

MMike

A fowl peckerwood.
Sep 5, 2001
18,207
105
just sittin' here drinkin' scotch
I gotsa zippy new computer right? 160 Gig hard drive? Well all of a sudden it seems to be full.....of crap. I only have 600 M free.

I did a defrag and it's like one big red stripe on my screen. I don't know what the hell happened.

Is this a virus thing or something wrong with the hard drive itself?

Oh well.... I was good for a month anyway.......
 
DHS

DHS

Friendly Neighborhood Pool Boy
Apr 23, 2002
5,094
0
Sand, CA
too much porn download?

sorry i'm only good with computers if i can see the problem...
 
Acadian

Acadian

Born Again Newbie
Sep 5, 2001
714
2
Blah Blah and Blah
spyware maybe?
Did you clean your HD? Go on your desktop, click on MyComputer, Right click on your harderive and select Properties, then run Disk Cleanup.
 
COmtbiker12

COmtbiker12

Turbo Monkey
Dec 17, 2003
2,577
0
Colorado Springs
Acadian said:
spyware maybe?
Did you clean your HD? Go on your desktop, click on MyComputer, Right click on your harderive and select Properties, then run Disk Cleanup.
Click to expand...
If that doesn't work, try sticking what files you wouldn't mind getting over again onto a CD or an external hard drive of some sort and rebooting your system from disc. That'll be a sure way to clean up everything if you do have any viruses.
 
MMike

MMike

A fowl peckerwood.
Sep 5, 2001
18,207
105
just sittin' here drinkin' scotch
Acadian said:
spyware maybe?
Did you clean your HD? Go on your desktop, click on MyComputer, Right click on your harderive and select Properties, then run Disk Cleanup.
Click to expand...
I have Window Washer and Spybot search and destroy...and one other one that escapes me at the moment....

The drive is so full that it says that it can't run the defrag properly....the report says:

Total fragmentation: 48%
FIle Fragmentation: 93%
Free space fragmentation 4%

There's mor to it....but I seem to have some fragmentation woes....
 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,145
1,234
NC
That's kinda bizarre... I would imagine that someone would know if they were well on their way to filling up a 160gb drive.

Questions:

Does anyone else use the computer?

Does anyone who uses the computer download movies or MP3s?

Do you have virus software? If so, do you regularly update it to get the latest virus definitions? If not, are you stupid? ;)

If it were me, I'd start browsing the C:\ drive and checking folder sizes. See if you can isolate the problem and locate the majority of the files. If you check all of your folder sizes and it doesn't add up to all the space you've used, I guess it could be a bad drive, though I don't think that defrag should show it as a heavily fragmented drive in that case.

If you don't have virus protection, it could very well be a virus.
 
DHS

DHS

Friendly Neighborhood Pool Boy
Apr 23, 2002
5,094
0
Sand, CA
hm, boot the computer up in Safe Mode,
restart and hold down the F8 key. and then look at the info of your harddrive. then run disk defrag
 
MMike

MMike

A fowl peckerwood.
Sep 5, 2001
18,207
105
just sittin' here drinkin' scotch
I've downloaded a bunch of mp3 but the total size of the folder is 200M.

I've installed some CAD software, and that's only 500M. My wife has been uploading a bunch of video from our camcorder on the highest quality setting. But there's no way she would have filled the hard drive. The machine is less than a month old.....

I wonder if my CAD software (which came from a dubious source), is the problem....
 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,145
1,234
NC
MMike said:
I've installed some CAD software, and that's only 500M. My wife has been uploading a bunch of video from our camcorder on the highest quality setting. But there's no way she would have filled the hard drive. The machine is less than a month old.....
Click to expand...
Depends on how much video, could be gigs worth.

The warning bell is the extreme fragmentation, though. Fragmentation occurs when you are constantly adding and deleting files, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a computer with 93% file fragmentation, let alone a new computer after only a month.

That just screams virus or bad hardware...

Are you running virus protection?
 
caboverpete

caboverpete

Monkey
Jun 8, 2002
359
0
the mighty blue ridge mountains
MMike said:
I've downloaded a bunch of mp3 but the total size of the folder is 200M.

I've installed some CAD software, and that's only 500M. My wife has been uploading a bunch of video from our camcorder on the highest quality setting. But there's no way she would have filled the hard drive. The machine is less than a month old.....

I wonder if my CAD software (which came from a dubious source), is the problem....
Click to expand...
If the video is in the DV format then it is going to take up about 13 gig per hour of video so if she transfered several full DV tapes to the machine that would sure start to fill things up.
 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,145
1,234
NC
caboverpete said:
If the video is in the DV format then it is going to take up about 13 gig per hour of video so if she transfered several full DV tapes to the machine that would sure start to fill things up.
Click to expand...
Right, but they should be in contiguous chunks of data, not so completely fragmented like that.

Speculation, but could a drive with a ton of bad sectors cause Windows to think it was fragmented? Since the drive can't write to the bad sectors, Windows could think that the data was not contiguous and therefore fragmented... Just making an educated guess, though.
 
Salami

Salami

Turbo Monkey
Jul 17, 2003
1,786
120
Waxhaw, NC
MMike said:
My wife has been uploading a bunch of video from our camcorder on the highest quality setting. But there's no way she would have filled the hard drive. The machine is less than a month old.....
Click to expand...
How much video? I have a project I working on that has 2 hours of raw footage at DV quality that takes up just over 30 gig. Also when I run the Disc Defragmenter it won't defrag the file, if I remember correctly it says the file is to big to move.
 
mack

mack

Turbo Monkey
Feb 26, 2003
3,674
0
Colorado
160 gig! wow thats insane! i have a 40 gig and its not any where near full, and thats with 4 games and 8 gigs of music. i guess i could fill it up if i had didnt have it in mp3.
 
DHS

DHS

Friendly Neighborhood Pool Boy
Apr 23, 2002
5,094
0
Sand, CA
yup gotta be the video. if its High quality DV.

i have about 200gigs worth of helmet cam footage on my computer. DV fills up quite FAST. and thats me editing out the crap from 300gigs.
 
MMike

MMike

A fowl peckerwood.
Sep 5, 2001
18,207
105
just sittin' here drinkin' scotch
Hmm.... she'll have a fit....she's been uploading every recorded second of my daughter's life for 3 days now....

MAybe we need to lower the quality. But we wantto make a DVD of decent quality......
 
DHS

DHS

Friendly Neighborhood Pool Boy
Apr 23, 2002
5,094
0
Sand, CA
well you only need like 30min to make a good baby vid. anymore then that i've been bored out of my mind.
 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,145
1,234
NC
MMike said:
Hmm.... she'll have a fit....she's been uploading every recorded second of my daughter's life for 3 days now....

MAybe we need to lower the quality. But we wantto make a DVD of decent quality......
Click to expand...
First thing to do is figure out where she's putting the video footage and make sure it accounts for the huge space loss.

Like I said, it should NOT be fragmenting the files like that.
 
Morryjg

Morryjg

Mr. Ho Jangles
May 9, 2003
905
0
Littleton
MMike said:
Hmm.... she'll have a fit....she's been uploading every recorded second of my daughter's life for 3 days now....

MAybe we need to lower the quality. But we wantto make a DVD of decent quality......
Click to expand...
Time to put a DVD burner in that machine and start off loading the video to DVD. Or, start putting more drives in that machine. It wouldn't surprise me that the drive is so fragmented. Windows has never been great at writing contiguous files.
 
narlus

narlus

Eastcoast Softcore
Staff member
Nov 7, 2001
24,658
65
behind the viewfinder
MMike said:
Hmm.... she'll have a fit....she's been uploading every recorded second of my daughter's life for 3 days now....
Click to expand...
wait until you have a 2nd kid. you'll be recording every 200th day of their life.
 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,145
1,234
NC
Morryjg said:
It wouldn't surprise me that the drive is so fragmented. Windows has never been great at writing contiguous files.
Click to expand...
I dunno... I worked in the I.T. industry for several years and am still involved very much with PC support/troubleshooting (strictly from an unpaid, "hey man, my computer is busted" perspective), and to give yourself 93% file fragmentation within a month is outrageous. That much file fragmentation only occurs through repeated file writing/deletion over long periods of time.

If you start with a full drive and write a lot of files to it, that can occur since the drive was already fragmented and the files simply have to be written where there's space, but to start with a mostly empty 160gb drive and end up like that is almost silly.
 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,145
1,234
NC
MMike said:
Well just spoke with the wife.... she deleted all of her video and now we have 130 gig free. Go figure...
Click to expand...
:think:

Is your remaining data still fragmented?

Your files should not be written to the drive in such a way that it causes such severe fragmentation...
 
MMike

MMike

A fowl peckerwood.
Sep 5, 2001
18,207
105
just sittin' here drinkin' scotch
binary visions said:
:think:

Is your remaining data still fragmented?

Your files should not be written to the drive in such a way that it causes such severe fragmentation...
Click to expand...
dON'T KNOW...Will check when I get home. I was planning to run the defrag again now that it's clear.

BUt she had about 30 files about 4 gig each.

She was using the SOny software that came with the camera on the highest quality.

Sh'e going to try again with Windows movie maker.

But really, is the quality good enough on "Normal" to view on a TV?
 
Pau11y

Pau11y

Turbo Monkey
Oct 20, 2004
1,968
0
In a web in the corner of your room
You should be able to defrag your rig now. If it's still not doing that, then you've got hardware issues. Also, it might be a good idea to get another HDD for your chic and the DV footage. They're really cheap these day, like <$0.50/gig towards the 200 GB mark. There's an external USB 2 250GB Maxtor listed on Bensbargains.net for Outpost.com for 180+shipping.

Edit: Also MMike, you should check out sites like tweakxp.com and chop some services out of that machine that you'll never need to get it to run even faster. I'm the head geek for a hotel which is running machines at least 2 generations old. After I get thru w/ them w/ the tweaks, they're as fast as anything out of the box from Dell or HP. & at home, I've got only a dual PIII 933. It's running as well as anything we have here at work after the tweaks. Hint: 2 key places to look are in the properties of My Computer and start/run/"msconfig". This is assuming you're running some flavor of XP
 
narlus

narlus

Eastcoast Softcore
Staff member
Nov 7, 2001
24,658
65
behind the viewfinder
i've got a 300GB external drive from Maxtor which cost about $250 about 5 months ago, and that's been great. USB 2.0 or firewire, setup was a snap. good stuff.
 
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