strange system files taking up lots of space after a clone??
Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2014 9:59 am
not sure if this is the correct sub-forum but it does have to do with space being swallowed up on my harddrive, so maybe? or it could be a software thing?
anyway, here's what happened. i just ran a clone operation of my windows7 main hdd to my backup hdd using xxclone. all went well and there were no errors. i tested the backup hdd by booting from it, and it was fine--booted right up. ok, so back to my main drive as my primary, but when i booted from it and get into the desktop i get a popup warning me of low disk space on my c: drive! before the clone operation i had 40gb free on my primary 500gb hdd, and the cloned backup drive appeared normal with 40gb free also. but now it is warning me that i only have 150mb of free space on my main drive!
ok, so i downloaded windirstat and let it see what was taking up the space. pagefile.sys was 6gb and hyberfil.sys was 6gb. even though i disabled hibernation in advanced power options previously, i still had that stupid file. ok, so i did the "powercfg -h off" thing in an elevated cmd prompt and the hiberfile.sys was removed. pagefile was left since my sytem has 6gb of ram. still 28gb extra somewhere...
turns out i have 5 hidden "system files" in my c:/windows dir that are each 5-6gb with no file extension. they are named "e" "i" "l" "s" and "y". the cloned drive does not have these files. anybody have any clue what these files are or seen something similar before? google is surprisingly of little help with them. i can't delete them as it says they are in use by another program. i can't open them up with a large text file viewer (ultraedit or gvim) because it says access denied. i tried taking ownership even though i already had full permissions and ownership privileges but same thing, access denied.
so i loaded up a winxp vm and finally got around the annoying "access denied" warnings and was able to open one of the files in ultraedit. but it is completely garbled text--looks like a foreign language or something. there are no complete words or any identifying characteristics to determine where these files came from. obviously, i can nuke the drive from orbit and use my backup drive as my primary but wanted some more info. thoughts?
anyway, here's what happened. i just ran a clone operation of my windows7 main hdd to my backup hdd using xxclone. all went well and there were no errors. i tested the backup hdd by booting from it, and it was fine--booted right up. ok, so back to my main drive as my primary, but when i booted from it and get into the desktop i get a popup warning me of low disk space on my c: drive! before the clone operation i had 40gb free on my primary 500gb hdd, and the cloned backup drive appeared normal with 40gb free also. but now it is warning me that i only have 150mb of free space on my main drive!
ok, so i downloaded windirstat and let it see what was taking up the space. pagefile.sys was 6gb and hyberfil.sys was 6gb. even though i disabled hibernation in advanced power options previously, i still had that stupid file. ok, so i did the "powercfg -h off" thing in an elevated cmd prompt and the hiberfile.sys was removed. pagefile was left since my sytem has 6gb of ram. still 28gb extra somewhere...
turns out i have 5 hidden "system files" in my c:/windows dir that are each 5-6gb with no file extension. they are named "e" "i" "l" "s" and "y". the cloned drive does not have these files. anybody have any clue what these files are or seen something similar before? google is surprisingly of little help with them. i can't delete them as it says they are in use by another program. i can't open them up with a large text file viewer (ultraedit or gvim) because it says access denied. i tried taking ownership even though i already had full permissions and ownership privileges but same thing, access denied.
so i loaded up a winxp vm and finally got around the annoying "access denied" warnings and was able to open one of the files in ultraedit. but it is completely garbled text--looks like a foreign language or something. there are no complete words or any identifying characteristics to determine where these files came from. obviously, i can nuke the drive from orbit and use my backup drive as my primary but wanted some more info. thoughts?