Where does the memory on the hard drive go? Where does memory go? Backups and recovery points

The great scientist Lomonosov said: “Nothing arises from anywhere and nothing disappears into nowhere.” Therefore, if you are losing disk space with Windows 10, there is a logical explanation for this. And you don’t have to immediately look for viruses on your PC. Often, the reason may lie in normal settings operating system.

Reasons why hard drive space is lost

If you notice that a significant amount of free memory has disappeared on your computer, first of all, you should launch the “Task Manager” and see what programs are running and whether there is an element in the processes that indicates the operation of a virus. Then you should check Windows 10 for viruses using the Dr.Web Curiet program! or any other antivirus.

• Recording system restore points during installation software, programs, games.
• Work of the swap file (sys) and hibernation file (hiberfil.sys).
• Files previous version Windows.

After checking these components, you will determine the exact reason for the loss of space on the hard drive.

How to fix this problem on a Windows 10 PC?

In order for the user to roll back the system to a more early state after a critical error, the function is enabled by default in Windows 10 automatic creation system restore points. After installing the program or drivers, you may notice how the amount of space on your computer decreases. local disk. This function works.

To configure settings for system restore points, do the following:

• Click right click mouse on the “Start” button and select “Control Panel”. Or enter in search bar required request.

• Next, select “System and Security”, “System”.

• A new window will open. In the menu on the left, select “System Protection”.

• Then select the tab with the same name - “System Protection”. Select the disk with the OS and in the recovery settings section, click on the “Configure” button.

• A new window will open again. Check the “Enable protection” checkbox and set the volume allowed for using recovery points. If you do not want to create points at all, you can click “Disable protection”. However this action we do not recommend doing this.

Now the system will not be able to occupy more than the specified space for files for Windows rollback 10.

Also, downloading and installing updates can affect the volume free space local disk. For example, there is a WinSxS folder in which update files are stored. It DOES NOT NEED TO BE CLEARED in Windows 10, as you can delete important data for system recovery and factory reset. In other versions Windows folder can be cleaned in the standard way.

The page file and hibernation file can be the culprits in the disappearance of free space. They are named as pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys. Their work can be customized. To do this, in the first case, do the following:

• Go to the system properties (the first two steps in the method above) and go to the “Advanced” tab. In the performance section, click on the “Options” button.

• A new window will open. Go to the “Advanced” tab. In settings virtual memory click “Change”. Then check the “Set” box and indicate the size. Click “Ok” to save the result.

As for the hibernation file, you can delete it if you are using a desktop PC and not a laptop. The hiberfil.sys file is located on local drive C. However, we recommend not deleting it, but only disabling it. To do this, do the following:

• Opening command line with Administrator rights.
• Enter “powercfg -h off”.
• Reboot the PC.

Also, free space may be lost if the user uninstalled the program incorrectly. Therefore, it is worth cleaning the folder with temporary files or running CCleaner to correctly clean the system from unused programs and other garbage.

Hello dear visitors. I hope you have already watched my video tutorial: " ", because today I will tell you the eleventh way with which you will find out where space on your hard drive disappears and how free up a lot of memory.

I decided to devote an entire lesson to this method of searching and deleting, since the method really works and in some cases allows us to free up many, many gigabytes of memory, both from the system disk and from any other.

This method is to use a special one, which convenient form will show us what the disk memory is full of, and after analyzing the files, we can easily delete them.

This is very convenient way, find out where the space on your hard drive is disappearing. I discovered it for myself quite recently, and I immediately liked it, because I found unnecessary files on the disk that I didn’t even know existed.

But I want to warn you right away that this method of disk cleaning is not for beginners. The reason is simple: here you will need to be able to independently analyze certain files and decide to remove them!

So, let's get to the point. The program is called WinDirStat and let me show you how to work in it.

First of all, download the program and unpack the archive. To run, use the WinDirStatPortable.exe file.

Immediately after launch, the program will offer to analyze any of the disks. Most often you want to understand where the disk space (C:) is going, so we select the system disk and click OK.

It will take about 5 minutes for analysis.

Upon completion, we will see a bunch of color pictures in varying quantities. The large black square indicates how much free space we have, the rest show the space occupied by various files.

By clicking on any squares, I can see which file they belong to. I want to say right away that the larger the square, the more space it takes up on the disk. Now I'm interested in the red squares. I would like to see what these files are. Maybe it's possiblefree up memorypermanently deleting them?

I click on the first red square and immediately pay attention to top part programs to understand what kind of file it is.

As you can see in my case, this is a file named DP_Video_nVIDIA... and this and similar files are located in the DriverPack folder. And what is most interesting weighs this folder more than 8 gigabytes.

From the name of the folder and the files inside it, I came to the conclusion that these files were downloaded using . Now they are no longer needed! First thing in the program WinDirStat I right-click on the folder and click Open.

The folder with files opens in a separate Windows Explorer. Here I double-check that the files really weigh 8 gigabytes and delete them!

I return to the WinDirStat program. Here I am still interested in what this is a large number of files under light black color? The files seem small, but there are quite a lot of them. I click on the first file and pay attention to the top part of the program.

Here I see that the file is located in the _acestream_cache_ folder, which is exactly 10 gigabytes in size! AWESOME!

By folder name acestream I can easily determine that these files belong to the program of the same name that I downloaded to . I am sure that the files that have accumulated in this folder are a regular cache that I can safely delete!

It turns out that I deleted almost 20 gigabytes unnecessary files. No program could find these files.

At the beginning of the lesson I already warned you that this way to free up memory not for beginners and I think you are already convinced of this. Finding files and folders that take up a lot of disk space is not at all difficult, but understanding Is it possible to delete these files?

But this does not apply to cleaning other drives. For example, if you want to determine where does disk space go? (D:) , then after analyzing it using the WinDirStat program, it will be easy for you to understand whether it is worth deleting a series or game that takes up 50 gigabytes. Well, and with system disk where it is important not to damage Windows files, everything is a little more complicated.

Let's return to the WinDirStat program. Here I also want to tell you that you can use not only colored squares to understand where the place went. You can simply sort the folders by size at the top of the program, and if one of the folders weighs a lot, then you need to study them one by one.

Let's look at what's inside these folders and draw the appropriate conclusions. For example, I opened several folders and see that one of them is called Camtasia Studio, and its volume is 1 gigabyte (for reference: Camtasia Studio is a program for).

I open Camtasia Studio and see that inside there is a folder CrashDumps, which I can safely empty, since these files, in fact, were created when the program froze, and now they are no longer needed.

Using WinDirStat program you get another disk cleaning tool. Apply the knowledge you have gained and benefit! Free up memory by analyzing.

That's all, I wish you good luck.

The present time is truly considered an age high technology. Nowadays you won’t surprise anyone around with a hard drive several terabytes in size; it has become a common occurrence. But, unfortunately, although progress is developing, the list of problems of the modern user remains unchanged. The main problem is HDD space. There is always little of it and it always runs out very quickly.

Nowadays you can download various programs on the Internet that allow you to:

• save space on HDD;
• remove unnecessary information;
• clean your entire computer from unnecessary information;

There are paid programs and there are free ones. What to choose?

Free ones are a freebie, but usually not effective.

Paid - buying a pig in a poke, you can run into fraud and waste your money.

It's better to start using PSEUDO free programs for cleaning your computer and HDD. Pseudo-free is when you are given some time (often only 30 days) to use the program and use its full functionality.

But in this article I would like to discuss the basic methods of freeing up space manually, and also consider some free utilities and programs.

If we want to quickly solve the problem with the C drive, then we proceed to familiarize ourselves with and purchase the necessary commercial software that professionally does everything you need for you.

Where does free memory disappear from drive C?

Let's first find out where it disappears to free memory from the C: drive, and how to deal with it. It must be said that the space disappears not only due to the active activity of the user, who downloads and installs various programs, but also due to the operation of the operating system.

Often the HDD space is filled with various desktop contents. Remember, everything that is on your desktop is saved by default to the C: drive. If you downloaded the latest movie or album of your favorite musical group and decided to leave it all “in front of your eyes,” then the memory will inexorably decrease. If the device has several disks, then you can transfer information to another without additional tools. It happens that the HDD has only one partition. First you need to divide it into several logical parts and perform the process of moving information.

Temporary files also “eat up” some space on the HDD. They are created automatically by the programs you are working with right now; such files are necessary until you finish working with the program. The safest option is to delete files immediately after they are needed. It often happens that everything is not as good as you want, gradually they gather and take up more and more space. Don't forget that if you are a user, then files from the Internet also tend to accumulate.

It also happens that there is simply a catastrophic lack of memory on the device, and it is simply impossible to delete some programs due to the constant need for work. What to do in this situation? You will get the answer by reading further in this article.

Before you start freeing memory, you should do some preparatory work. This will be required for everything to be successful and give the desired result. For clarity, we recommend writing down the amount of free space on paper and updating this data at each cleaning stage. At the end of the process, you will be surprised how much memory you saved without unnecessary sacrifices.

Deleting temporary files

Let's move on to the action of cleaning the computer from temporary files.

First, go to “My Computer”, select the required folder and click “Service”, after which you need to click on folder properties. Next, you need to go to “View” and in the window that opens, select “Options”, where you select “Show hidden files" All this is necessary to clean up temporary files. Confirm the new settings.

If Windows 7 or Vista is installed on your computer, you will need to click “Start” and then select “Settings Panel”. In the window, find an icon called “Folder Options.”

Let's move on to the next step. Select “Start” again and find the “Run” button, in the window that opens, enter the following characters: %USERPROFILE% and confirm. As a result, a new window should open in which you should find a folder called “Local Settings”, then select “Temp”. In the window that opens, press the combination of the Ctrl+A and Shift+Delete buttons.

Confirm your choice. This way, you will delete all the contents and it will not be moved to the Trash. Don't worry about needing these files, they are not necessary for you at all.

It is worth saying that during formatting a situation will necessarily arise with repeated confirmation of the choice. In the window that opens, click to confirm your choice. If an error window appears, don't worry, confirm. Find the file that caused the error and deselect it. After completing these steps, you can delete all remaining files again. Answering the question why the error occurred, it is worth saying that we are trying to clean up the files that the operating system uses.

Now we can see the contents of the Temp folder. The number of files in it should be minimal. Let's look at Properties and how much memory has actually been freed.

The number can be simply staggering. There are cases where the memory increases to 20 GB, if you have never cleaned this folder before. Imagine how much space you gained by deleting only temporary files, and there are other ways to free up space.

The next stage of cleaning your computer is as follows: open “My Computer”, select the C: drive. Select the “Windows” folder and select “Temp” again. Please note that if you want to access, a warning may appear, you click "Display all content". You don't have to worry that if you delete the contents of this folder, you will disrupt the operation of the operating system. In fact, it stores files for compatibility between the system and older programs. Although the folder may be almost empty, cleaning is necessary. To do this, select all the contents again using the Ctrl+A combination and delete them.

Let's move on to the action of cleaning temporary files that appeared while working with the Internet. You need to go to “Start” and go to the settings panel, where you select the “Internet Options” icon. Click delete in the window that opens. A new window will appear in which you need to check the boxes next to “Temporary files” and “Save node data”, click “Delete”. This method is most effective for Explorer browser users. If you are one of them, see after this operation how much space you have freed up.

After all these steps, you need to empty the Trash. Files that you deleted may accidentally be moved there. We hope you don't have anything valuable stored there.

Removing duplicate files using the DupKiller program

Next, to clean your computer you will need special program DupKiller. It will help you delete copies of files that may be found on your computer. The program is completely free and you can download it from the developer's website. Perhaps in the near future you will have to pay for this program, but for now it is free and you can use it safely and without problems.

After downloading, you need to install the program. While doing this, put desired language and click “Next”, accept the terms “ User Agreement" and click "Next". Expect complete installation and confirm.

Go through “Start” and select “Programs”, in the window that opens, click on the name DupKiller. This program is also convenient because it offers pop-up tips that you can easily turn off. As a result, you should see the main window of the DupKiller program. You can check the box next to drive C or all of them at once. Select “Files” from the menu and click “All files”.

Go to the “Exception” menu. You can leave everything in this folder as is. In this case, you will see how the program works. In “Search Settings” and “Others” leave everything unchanged.

Go to “Delete” and select move to “Trash”. This is necessary in order to avoid loss important information. If you have no doubt, you can delete it immediately. Now click “Scan” and all you have to do is wait. At the end, a window will appear in front of you, which will indicate the total volume of duplicates on the computer. The amount of memory that copies occupy can be very large.

Then the fun begins. You need to check the boxes on all files that can be deleted; you do not need a duplicate. Please note that the checkbox is checked only for one copy, and not for all, otherwise there is a high probability of deleting the original.

Defragmenting your hard drive

Another way to clean your device of unnecessary information is defragmentation. This operation optimizes the location of files on the hard drive, and also compresses files that have not been used for a long time. All this will save some space on your computer.

To get started, go to “My Computer” and select C:. Go to “Properties” and click “Tools”, in the window that appears, click “Defragment”.

In the window that opens, click “Defragmentation”. After all this, you can calmly go about your business, for example, cleaning or spending time with friends. It is recommended to carry out such measures on average once every six months, possibly more often if you actively use your device. During this process, working on the computer will be simply impossible, due to the fact that it will work very slowly.

By the way, you can always delete programs that you have not used for a long time or do not intend to use in the near future. Agree that you often downloaded a program “once”, and then forgot about its existence, and it takes up space on your computer.

More emergency methods of freeing up space are also used. This method should be used after all previously proposed methods have been tested. If you have deleted everything you can and the space still hasn’t appeared, you will have to purchase new HDD. In this case, we throw all the information that does not fit onto it. In addition, all new files will be transferred to it. But do not forget to delete temporary files from the new disk over time. But it happens that there is no time or Money. How to get out of the situation?

Compressing information on disk

There is also a method of compressing all the information on the disk. To do this, you need to go to your HDD and select “Properties”, in the window that appears, click on “Compress disk”. Next you need to confirm your choice. In the pop-up window, apply your selection to all folders. This procedure will last a maximum of half an hour, and a minimum of about ten minutes.

Let us remind you that this method is not a salvation, but an emergency measure. Why is that? The disadvantage of this method is the slow operation of the entire computer. This is due to the fact that when performing operations, the system must initially unpack the file, and only then begin working with it. The unpacking process begins to significantly reduce the speed and performance of the machine. We recommend that you, even if you have used such drastic measure, try to return your device to normal state. Only after this the performance will increase significantly.

In this topic you learned the most simple methods increasing memory on your device. We hope that by adhering to them and constantly cleaning your car, in the future you will not have the need for emergency methods. So start with regular programs on optimizing your computer and HDD.

Greetings to one and all! There is never too much free space, and any owner of a 16 GB computer can absolutely confirm this. iPhone versions(the author of these lines is among you!). However, owners of other smartphones from Apple (those with a more capacious internal storage), they also probably don’t want the memory in their device to disappear without a trace.

And it can really disappear even when, as it seems to you, you are not doing anything with the gadget at all. Just use it in " normal mode", and the place is gradually shrinking. Do you think this is all fantasy and this can’t happen at all? This is where I will probably disappoint you very much - how could it be! Let's look at the reasons for such leaks, and also find out the most important thing - how to deal with them?!

Are you ready? One, two, three... let's go! :)

Lost memory after updating or restoring iOS

With enviable consistency, Apple releases firmware that makes our lives better :) But, unfortunately, it is not always possible to update by directly installing new software (there are many comments with problems), and you have to “roll” the firmware through iPhone recovery. Restored, set up an iCloud backup, go to the storage usage statistics and see how precious megabytes are leaking away every minute...

Cause

Very simple and obvious - backup iCloud copy does not recover instantly. It seems to you that the copy has already been downloaded to the device, but in fact this is far from the case. And the recovery process may take more than one day (here, of course, everything depends on the Internet speed and the amount of data).

Every minute, the iPhone downloads information from the “cloud” and transfers it to itself. At the same time, you will not necessarily see this data - it could be message history, cache, and other service information. Visually, all this is not visible, but nevertheless, loading on the device is coming and memory slowly decreases.

How to fight

You can simply turn off iCloud in settings, but is it worth doing? It is important to wait until everything is loaded to the end and then the place will stop disappearing anyhow. It's not always true and here's why...

Where does memory disappear while using iPhone?

iPhone memory may decrease during normal use of the phone, even if you do not download any applications or programs, take photos or shoot videos. Where does the free space go? And here's where:

1. Messages and correspondence in various instant messengers - iMessage, WhatsApp, Viber, etc. Nowadays communication is becoming more and more diverse; various multimedia information is being added to the text. Where is all this stored? That's right, in the phone's memory. We received a couple of messages with audio-video attachments, so that’s minus a few megabytes.
2. Application and browser cache. Most programs, during use, store data downloaded from the network in their memory. We scrolled through the message feed in the VK client, some data was cached and the size of the application increased slightly, which means the number internal memory decreased. It would seem that they did nothing, but the free space disappeared somewhere. And so with almost any application.
3. Malfunctions various programs, which leads to their “growing” to indecent sizes. Hello, WhatsApp from early 2016 :)
4. Sometimes, when the volume is quite large, there is the so-called « diagnostic information”, which is accumulated in the device and must be transferred to iTunes during synchronization.
5. iOS has « A wonderful feature is that the system downloads its own update independently and without warning. And the size of this update can vary - from tens of megabytes to several gigabytes. And the most important thing is that for now new firmware it won't download, you just won't see it. Everything naturally swings slowly and the memory on the iPhone disappears just as slowly.

« Thanks to all this, a situation may occur when not a single program or game is installed, and there is no free space left. Is it possible to fight this? Certainly! And now I'll tell you how...

How to prevent memory loss on iPhone

Here are some tips that will help not only free up memory, but also make it stop disappearing on its own:

Attention, bonus! Available on iPhone - worth using!

As you can see, there is no need to talk about the fact that the iPhone reduces memory on its own (unless it downloads the update - but that doesn’t count :)). For all these « leaks” there are objective reasons and they are quite easy to fix - all you have to do is not be lazy and try all the options.

P.S. Would you like to tell us about your situation? Do you have any questions or questions? Be sure to write in the comments - we’ll try to figure it out together!

P.S.S. We put « like”, click on the buttons social networks and we get + to the free gigabytes on the device. This is so cool that you should definitely try it! :)

They are an integral element of any computer, playing the role of a link between the processor and long-term memory (hard drive. Over time, the shapes and models of microcircuits have changed random access memory, the main thing did not change - the purpose.

Why is there not enough RAM?

Let's start with the fact that RAM today has higher characteristics, such as speed and frequency. Current computer builds mainly use DDR3, the latest RAM model that is naturally more productive than its predecessors. In new computers and laptops, about 3 gigabytes of RAM are increasingly installed (for example, for normal operation Windows XP required no more than 512 megabytes), this is due to the increasing demands of users on PCs.

The amount of RAM and user requests do not always coincide, then a noticeable shortage begins system resources, which most often results in slowdowns and problematic launching of some programs.

That’s when you should ask about the amount of RAM and what it is spent on in the system. Of course, if your computer only has 1 gigabyte of memory installed, you shouldn't expect much from performance in new versions of Windows operating systems.

• In order to find out the total size of the computer’s RAM, you need to right-click on the “Computer” shortcut on the desktop and from context menu select “Properties”. In the window that opens, you can see system information about the configuration of the PC, in one of the lines of which the RAM is indicated.

• In order to check in real time which application is loading RAM, you can use the Task Manager. Open Task Manager using the combination Ctrl keys+ Shift + Esc (for Windows XP – Ctrl + Alt + Del), go to the processes tab and in it click on the “RAM” column, thereby sorting active processes By the largest number occupied RAM.

What programs take up RAM?

There are a number of programs that often take up more RAM compared to other software. So, for example, the main “sink” of RAM will be, no matter whose development it is or what version it is. The second most occupied amount of RAM can be called graphic editor and video editing. Also, do not forget about computer games, which require up to 6 – 8 gigabytes of RAM per hour to operate in high-performance mode!

Note! In addition to the programs, the operating room itself Windows system, starting from version , uses RAM resources as a cache for frequently used system files!

The main thing is to monitor the health of the operating system as a whole, try to exclude programs from startup and not run an excessive number of applications at the same time.

Call or directly on the website! Our specialists will be happy to help you