disk-space interview questions
Top disk-space frequently asked interview questions
The official Microsoft Windows 8 (64 bit) disk space requirements are the same as Windows 7: 20 GB.
In actual practice, how does Win8's disk space usage compare to Win7's? Specifically, how does disk space usage compare after a clean install of each? I'm thinking the new Metro stuff must take additional space, but MS could have slimmed down the rest of Windows at the same time.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I have been looking at a bunch of videos and now understand a bit better how computers work. I better understand what RAM is, volatile and non-volatile memory, and the process of swapping. I also understand why increasing RAM speeds up a computer.
I don't understand why cleaning up disk space speeds up a computer. Does it? Why does it? Does it have to do with searching for available space to save things? Or with moving things around to make a long enough continuous space to save something? How much empty space on the hard disk should I leave free?
Source: (StackOverflow)
On my SSD machine, the C:\Windows\Installer folder is massive and takes up about 15% of my total disk space.
Is there a way to clean up that folder without killing Windows 8.1? Tucking away the installers on the OS partition seems wasteful.
Source: (StackOverflow)
A Vista virtual machine I use only has a 10 GB virtual hard disk -- and I'm worried about it running out of space over time.
I used TreeSize to check for the culprits..
And the primary culprit is that /winsxs or "Windows Side-By-Side" folder.
What is the Windows Side By Side folder? Well, that's explained pretty well here.
All of the components in the operating system are found in the WinSxS folder – in fact we call this location the component store. Each component has a unique name that includes the version, language, and processor architecture that it was built for. The WinSxS folder is the only location that the component is found on the system, all other instances of the files that you see on the system are “projected” by hard linking from the component store. Let me repeat that last point – there is only one instance (or full data copy) of each version of each file in the OS, and that instance is located in the WinSxS folder. So looked at from that perspective, the WinSxS folder is really the entirety of the whole OS, referred to as a "flat" in down-level operating systems. This also accounts for why you will no longer be prompted for media when running operations such as System File Checker (SFC), or when installing additional features and roles.
That explains why the folder starts off big, but not why it gets larger over time – the answer to that question is servicing. In previous versions of Windows the atomic unit of servicing was the file, in Windows Vista it’s the component. When we update a particular binary we release a new version of the whole component, and that new version is stored alongside the original one in the component store. The higher version of the component is projected onto the system, but the older version in the store isn’t touched. The reason for that is the third part of why the component store gets so large.
Lots of other people complaining about the size of the /winsxs folder, too:
A coworker recently received his every two year work laptop refresh and was in the middle of loading his new laptop with Vista. For some reason, his hard drive C: was partitioned to only 25GB and the rest of the space reserved for a much larger drive D:.
Anyway, after loading many Windows Updates, he was left with hardly any drive space left on C:, and for some reason, the WinSxS directory had ballooned to over 8GB.
While I knew what the WinSxS (Windows Side-by-Side) directory was for, I wasn't quite sure why that directory would explode in size so fast with normal operating system updates.
I don't really care about having all these duplicate files for safety, but I do care about the VM exploding due to an out of disk space error. So.. can /winsxs be safely pared down in any way? It doesn't seem that it can be..
Administrators should not, for any reason, take it upon themselves to clean out the /winsxs directory - doing so may prevent Windows Update and MSI from functioning properly afterwards. Preventing accidental deletion from the directory is accomplished by putting a strong security descriptor on the directory that inherits to its children.
If this /winsxs folder gets any larger, I'm going to have to re-image this virtual machine.. which I really don't want to do!
Source: (StackOverflow)
I'm looking for a program to show me which files/directories occupy the most space, something like:
74% music
\- 60% music1
\- 14% music2
12% code
13% other
I know that it's possible in KDE3, but I'd rather not do that - KDE4 or command line are preferred.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I used Defraggler to defragment free space on my 100 GB C:\ drive which was 85 GB full. After defragmentation, the drive showed only 75 GB full. How did 10 GB of free space magically appear? Did I lose any data?
I did a disk cleanup before defragmenting and my trash was only about 11 MB, so it can't be because of cleaning the temporary files. Note that I defragmented "free space" which means that it should have rearranged the empty blocks to be contiguous.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I've been looking on an XP machine what is using all that diskspace, and it turns out C:\Windows\Installer is high up there on the list of directories that use the most diskspace.
It seems to contain a cache of msi and msp files.
Is it safe to delete those? To save diskspace, I've been deleting the "$KB...$" directories for ages without any problems. I want my Windows Updates in my system, why you would want to uninstall them is something that I have never understood. (Except when you're on an update revision board professionally or something of that order.)
Source: (StackOverflow)
Why do SSDs have sizes like 240 GB or 120 GB rather than the normal 256 GB or 512 GB?
Those numbers make much more sense than 240 or 120.
Source: (StackOverflow)
How can I visualize which folders and files are taking up all of the space on my hard drive?
I'm getting some conflicting reports on the size of hard drive contents. Namely what is and isn't there and what folders are actually using the space.
I need to know which of the files or folders the culprits behind all this hidden bloat. Also there should be a print option to get it on paper.
Source: (StackOverflow)
Two days ago I had a full C: drive, after which I deleted 8 GB of data. The next day the hard drive was full again, so I continued with deleting another 5 GB, and once again the next day the disk was full.
After some searching for what caused the disk space to be filled so quickly, I used the windirstat tool to find which files took up the most space. I found out that the CBS.log file, which is located in c:\windows\logs\cbs\, is 20 GB large.
I am using Windows 8.
- Should this file be this large, and if not, how can I reduce the size?
- What is the purpose of this file?
- Can I delete it?
Source: (StackOverflow)
du and df are nice, but I don't know how to filter the data they provide the way I do with SequoiaView. I would like to know which are the largest folders and the largest files in a glance.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I am in a situation where I am getting an error when I try to save a file to my Ubuntu server via ssh. It says there isn't any available space left. I don't know how that can be true. What should I do to determine how much space is left and/or what resources are using the most space?
Update: df -h gave me some stuff to look at. Is that the command I am looking for?
Source: (StackOverflow)
I just ran WinDirStat and noticed that Google Chrome is using tons of disk space.
One file in particular is 5.9GB and hasn't been modified since July 11, 2013, its name is just: 00000001
What is this file? Why was it created? And is it safe to delete?
To try to give me more insight, I checked Windows Reliability Monitor History for that date. I found that the time it was created coincides with the time I tried to mod GTA IV with ICE Enhancer and texture packs.
Here is how that went:
I suspect these two things are related. Could I delete that file? Why was it created?
Source: (StackOverflow)
There are a number of sub $200 Windows 10 laptops with only a 32 GB SSD hard drive, like Lenovo 100s, HP Stream 13, etc...
Given that the Windows directory itself is over 32GB on my regular laptop, how do these laptops even function? Is there space to store anything? Wouldn't I have an out of hard drive space problem very soon?
Source: (StackOverflow)
I'm trying to determine what's eating almost half of disk on my Windows 7 Lenovo laptop but haven't been able to determine what. I read some of the answers on this site but none of the causes seems to be the cause of my problem.
What I've done so far:
- Checked Windows' System Restore points but only minimum use, either way I deleted around 2GB if usage from there
- Used WinDirStat and it came back with a total of 71.3GB usage at the root level
- C Drives properties says 135GB being used out of 138 GB total, ie, 135 GB - 71.3GB = 63.7GB missing somewhere
- No "Unknown" files reported by WinDirStat
- Windows Disk Management utility doesn't report any unused partitions or unclaimed space
- chkdsk comes out clean
- Windows disk cleanup tool doesn't report anything big, just small stuff in the lower MB range
- Lenovo backup tool hasn't been used nor there is a folder for the backup images
Any idea on what to look at and/or do?
EDIT: some additional info...
Source: (StackOverflow)