where did my 14 GB go?

[Deleted]

on the "my computer" screen, when i go to properties, my C drive is 1,000,097,181,696 bytes, or 931 GB big. when I right-click, it says: 491,972,222,976 bytes used, or 458 GB; and 508,124,958,720 bytes available, or 473 GB.

however, when i Go 1 level deeper, to C:\, select every file and folder there, and then right-click and go to "properties", it says the size of those 234,870 files and 40,414 folders is 477,605,406,335 bytes, or 444 GB.

where did those 14 GB go?

[Deleted]

It's the page file and the hibernate backup.

[Deleted]

page file and hibernate backup? this computer has hibernate completely disabled, and I got 16 GB of ram, so i doubt my pagefile ever gets used.

[Evildeffy]

page file and hibernate backup? this computer has hibernate completely disabled, and I got 16 GB of ram, so i doubt my pagefile ever gets used.

Unless you physically disabled your page file, it will still be there using up space.

Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Performance Settings -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory settings.

Tick off the first setting.
Select your drive that has a pagefile and either disable it or move it to another drive.
Note: Not recommended without SSD.

[Deleted]

It doesnt matter how often the pagefile is used. Its about how the pagefile is set up. Just check the settings on it.

You can also use SpaceMonger to get a neat visualization of your space.

[Dakkomakko]

Windows always makes this swap-file. regardless how much unused system-memory.

[Deleted]

You are checking while system and hidden files are shown right? In my case that adds 6 files and folder when checking C: directly. A lot of data can hide there.....

[Deleted]

if some maps are translucent, that means they're hidden maps that are shown, right?

also, i'm searching my entire C:\ drive for a file called "pagefile", but it does not show anything. does that mean that i don't have a pagefile?

---------- Post added 2012-02-28 at 04:17 PM ----------

Unless you physically disabled your page file, it will still be there using up space.

Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Performance Settings -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory settings.

Tick off the first setting.
Select your drive that has a pagefile and either disable it or move it to another drive.
Note: Not recommended without SSD.

i got 16 GB of RAM, doesn't that mean i could do without a pagefile?

[vesseblah]

i got 16 GB of RAM, doesn't that mean i could do without a pagefile?

In theory yes. Some older programs requires pagefile to be present even if it's not necessary. I recommend turn it to fixed low size such as 256 meg, then it wont get used, wont take much space from disc and wont bug out programs that expect to see it.

[slowside]

In most cases you should just leave the page file alone. Here is a good article. You're system will have a pagefile unless you disable it, Also some systems will have a hibernation file even if you set the computer to never hibernate.

[vesseblah]

In most cases you should just leave the page file alone. Here is a good article. You're system will have a pagefile unless you disable it, Also some systems will have a hibernation file even if you set the computer to never hibernate.

That article is from 2009 so it's getting old, and with modern computer and 8GB of RAM, Windows will assign 12GB of pagefile and 8GB of hibernate file straight out of the box regardless of if it's used or not. Turning those off can save 20GB from 60GB SSD which is a huge thing.

[Deleted]

If your pagefile.sys is not shown, then most likely you have your system files hidden, and that's where you 14GB will be too probably. System files include your recycle bin, config.msi folder and several folders for recovery and temporary data.
System files are hidden better then normal hidden files. If you have only checked 'Show hidden files' in your explorer options, system files are still not shown. You have to uncheck 'Hide protected operating system files' for them to get shown.

[slowside]

That article is from 2009 so it's getting old, and with modern computer and 8GB of RAM, Windows will assign 12GB of pagefile and 8GB of hibernate file straight out of the box regardless of if it's used or not. Turning those off can save 20GB from 60GB SSD which is a huge thing.

Maybe you should actually read the Article???

"For example, if your system has 4GB of RAM and your peak memory usage was 5GB (including virtual memory), you should set your pagefile to at least 1GB and the maximum as 2GB to give you a buffer to keep you safe in case a RAM-hungry application needs it. If you have 8GB of RAM and a max 3GB of memory usage, you should still have a pagefile, but you would probably be fine with a 1 GB size."

Also I never said to not remove the hibernation file, and while SSDs are much more common they are still not the norm. With an SSD you should still have a pagefile in most cases, though setting it to 1GB, or moving it to another drive is preferable if you need the space.

P.S. Windows 7 will not assign 12GB to the pagefile with an 8GB system by default. Here it the relevant Technet article.

[Deleted]

well, i've unchecked that, and all of a sudden, pagefile.sys appeared with a size of 8 GB, and hibernate also appeared with a size of 6 GB. that should explain it.

[slowside]

Yup. If you open a command prompt w/ admin privileges and type "powercfg -h off" it will delete the hibernation file. I'm not sure why, but sometimes windows won't delete it even if you set the power options to never hibernate.

As for the Pagefile, if you want the space you could set it to 1GB min & max. You will probably not run out of ram unless you really try, and that should be enough room for anything that needs to use it.