Is Acronis using up all my hard drive space?
I have a problem with the hard drive on our computers running out of space, which seems weird as my data amounts to 98g and the drive it 300 g. - the other drive is 500g and almost out of space also - data 14 g, so even with programs etc, there should be heaps of space on our hard drives. I run Acronis 2012 home, and have a 2T external drive on each computer for backups. I run an incremental backup continuously, and have a full back up set to run each week. As far as I can tell they do back up to the external drive.
But something is clearly using up all my hard drive space and I can't figure out what, and am suspicious it is Acronis. I ran WinDirStat and it maps out how the space is being used, but there is 69% of my drive that is not accessible (on one computer)
I have run virus scans etc to check there was nothing nasty on my system.
I have two computers and both computers constantly pop up the message that the external drive is running out of space and the back up will fail. But there is loads of space on both external drives. I am wondering if maybe then Acronis defaults to the hard drive instead?
I am not a techie type, I just want to have this running without having to worry about it, but clearly something is using up all my hard drive. Can anyone tell me how I can check if it is Acronis? And if so how do I fix it? Anything I have used to try to find what is using that space, can't seem to tell me, firstly what is using up all the space, and secondly how to get it back and stop it being used!
Thanks,
Annie D
sorry -duplicated parts of Pat's reply
Hi Pat,
Sorry I need a bit more clarification:
Windows system protection can take a lot of space to store shadow copies, depending on your settings. Right click on the computer icon, choose properties, choose system protection on the left side and verify your settings.
Do you mean do this in Acronis? or just on my hard drive? I can't see anywhere on my hard drive under properties that shows anything about windows protection settings or shadow copies. I am using Windows 7 by the way.
File system errors can also happen. run chkdsk X: /f on each "X" partition from a command prompt (run as administrator).
I am not a techie, so I don't know how to do this. I am assuming I have to get a dos prompt up somewhere to type this in? Would you mind giving me some more steps?
If you run non-stop backup, this can also fill up your backup disk.
It is not the backup disk that is running out of space, something is using up my hard drives on our computers themselves - despite the settings for the destination drive being external drives. Nearly 70% of the hard drive on one computer has been used up by some program and I can't even find out what program has done it. I am assuming Acronis, but I don't know how to check - maybe your chkdsk will tell me that?
Thanks for your help,
Annie D :)
Annie,
What OS are you running?
Have you run windows search with the file size as the search parameter, to see if you can spot what file(s) are growing?
What size is your Windows restore cache if enabled? To get to this press the Windows button + pause break key, click on the System Restore tab of the form that pops up and then see how much space this uses.
Is your swap file taking up too much space? From the form above click on the Advanced tab and then click on the first button 'settings' for virtual memory, see how much space that is using.
Another option to check is open up Windows Explorer, select Tools from the menu bar then Folder Options, then View. Change settings so that you can see all hidden files and folders inclduing system files. You will get a warning message which is safe to ignore. then look in Windows Explorer and from the left hand panel look for folders that look dim, these are hidden folders, see if any seem extremely large in size as far as contents are concerned.
Annied,
For the system protection settings, look at the attached picture. Then let us know if the settings for the windows shadow copies storage is similar to the one on my system (11%).
If it is OK, let's try to do some disk clean up. Click on the orb in the lower left corner of your desktop, type "disk cleanup", choose the disk cleanup tool and use it on your disk.
Next, is there a possibility you are using a program that stores big temporary files (like a disk burner, maybe some video editing tool, or a photo editing tool, or are you downloading stuff from the Internet)? If yes, use these applications, look for a cache cleanup menu. On IE, it is in "internet Options". delete temporary files...
Finally, to run check disk, double click on the "computer" icon that is on your desktop, or choose "computer" on the left side of the menu that pops up when you click on the orb. Right click on the suspect disk, choose properties, tools, click on "check now" and check both boxes. The computer may have to restart. This process can last a long time, so be prepared to let this run during the night or something.
Thanks guys I really appreciate your help - but some of this is going over my head!!
Colin:
I am running Windows 7 Home Premium
Re running windows search with the file size as search parameter - I typed in 164.2gb but nothing came up should I put some sort of
command as well?
Re pushing the windows button and pause break - what windows button? Sorry to be a bit dim! I tried the button in the bottom
left at the same time as pause-break but got nowhere so clearly I am clicking the wrong thing!
Did tools and show hidden files:
There are no greyed out folders in the left column, only on the right, and the greyed out ones seem to be system files, and do not show the size. ie boot, MSOCache, ProgramData, Recovery, and AppData is greyed out under user.
Pat:
My settings for system protection are only 2% - 5.89g
I've already done all the disk clean up stuff, cleared caches and temp files etc, and run check disk.
I don't use disk burner and have not done any video editing on this computer as far as I can remember. I do my editing on my other computer, using flipshare. The files do take up a lot of room, but they are accounted for when you look at the attached map I have
saved when I ran WindDirStat - this is how I could see there was a huge chunk of my hard drive that is not accessible - on this computer we are talking about 164.1g - 55% of my drive.
The yellow in the image is the inaccessible space.
That was why I was wondering if Acronis might be putting backups on my hard drive when I get error messages all the time about the target drive running out of space for backups - yet there is loads of space left on the 2T external drive.
Attached drive map image in case this is in anyway enlightening!
Thanks heaps,
Annie :)
What does the 'unknown' disk space represent or is that where the problem is?
The Windows button is the button on the keyboard with the Windows 'flag' on it.
Windows + Pause/Break is the standard button combination, but sometimes Windows + Print Screen works instead.
Open "computer" and type *.* in the search box. Wait for the green bar to reach the right end of the address bar. Then click the small black triangle on the "more options" icon in the upper right corner of the search results, choose "details". Then, click on the size column to sort all your files by size.
Hi guys, thank you for your patience!
Colin:
Yes the yellow unknown disk usage is the problem - 164g of space used up by an unknown program - I have run virus scans etc and there does not appear to be anything as far as I can tell. That is why I wondered if it might be Acronis, as I can't imagine what else could use so much space up, and I can't get access to it to see what is is.
Re windows button on keyboard, duh! I never knew that was there!
Is finding the restore cache, the same as I did in Pat's instructions from his screen shots - when I try to do what you said, I ended up in the same place?
Virtual memory is showing 2045mb - not sure if this is what you mean as my swap file?
***
Pat:
Did the search and sort and the biggest file is a system file:
pagefile.sys 2,095,016 kb
next biggest is:
hiberfil.sys 1,571260
then mp4 video files - but these show up on windirstat so are accounted for.
Any ideas of what I can try next?
Thanks heaps,
Annie D :)
Someone put me onto treesize and FINALLY I can see what all the hidden space is (164 gig) and I am pretty sure it is Acronis. I have attached a screenshot to this.
I can delete from within tree size I think but I am scared that I will mess something up. Does anyone know about treesize?
Secondly - that doesn't solve the problem of why Acronis is saving all these temp files to my hard drive - the backup drive is an external drive. And that is also suspiciously short of space (being a 2T drive there should be loads of space) so I am wondering if Acronis is doing the same thing on that drive but I haven't checked that yet.
I just want a backup system that works properly and that I don't have to spend ages trying to figure out what is going wrong!
Can anyone advise me what I should do, or should I submit a ticket to Acronis themselves?
Annied,
THis is bizarre. The picture you uploaded shows there are big files in the C:\Windows\Temp folder, but you don't see them with Windows Explorer?
Let's try a command prompt.
In the search box of your computer type: CMD, right click on the CMD.exe search result and run as administrator. In the black box that shows up, you should see something like C:\Windows\System32
At the prompt, type cd..
You should now be at C:\Windows\
Type cd Temp
You should now be at C:\Windows\Temp
Type dir *.* /p, press the spacebar to go through the entire list
You should see listings and file listing. Do you see all these temp files that Treefolder is listing?
If you see these files, type del *.*
If you don't see these files, there is probably an issue with your filesystem.
Exit that command prompt. Search the computer for Disk Cleanup. Use this tool to clean the disk. Is the problem still there?
Those files probably belong to Adobe PDF reader or Adobe Acrobat, check your Windows Indexing settings and also check what version of Adobe you have, this problem seems to be related to early version 7 Adobe products.
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/735623
http://www.bvanleeuwen.nl/faq/?p=454
This one might have the answer. http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/acr-tmp-files-t2331677.html
If you are going to contact Acronis you might need to do it today as you only have 30 days from purchase for free support unless they decide it is a software bug or you have a recovery problem in which case you won't need to pay.
Pat - nothing at all comes up when I search the way you said. And I have not been able to find what these files are until I got onto tree-size, as shown on my earlier screenshot in winddirstat, it just shows a huge chunk of unknown files.
I have run disk cleanup numerous times - and on the windows 7 forum they showed me how to do an extended cleanup, that just gives me a few extra mb.
Colin - will check further - I thought I had the latest version of Adobe reader. having a quick look on those forums it does appear that this may be my issue.
I am way past my 30 days with Acronis, this issue has been going on for a long time.
I had assumed as all the files start with acr (acr9EE.tmp for example) that acr would be short for acronis - but acr seems to be short for Acrobat! I'll look into this further.
I can't open the files to see what they are, but I am pretty sure I can delete them in tree-size - but I am scared to do that in case they are something that should be there.
Ran into a dead end again - the solution is to upgrade to the latest version - Adobe Reader X (10.1.3) which I have.
The manual solutions are for windows xp or 2000 - I have windows 7 home premium. I'll have a go to see if following the same instructions works.
Annied,
I wouldn't be concerned about deleting in the viewer tool. I am suspecting there is a problem with the file system and maybe that deletion will suffice to correct them.
According to this post, this is a problem with Acrobat, not with Acronis: http://www.planetpdf.com/forumarchive/152722.asp
Thanks Pat - I was just a bit concerned, that article is from 2006 - so all my software is totally different. I have not looked for that file yet to try renaming it, I have tried to search for topics that are more up to date, but so far all the posts are old. But looks like I can just delete from in treesize without a problem. But I still want to stop it happening.
One suggestion was to take Adobe out of the start menu, so have done that.
Thanks for your help. :)
I just installed Acronis True Image 2015 at build 6613 on my windows 7 pro machine. I noticed after testing creating a backup and deleting two older backups from my external HD, my main C drive used space went from 128 GB to 300 GB. I assumed the backup tib files I deleted from the external HD via Acronis, went to the Recycle Bin. I found the recycle bin empty. I then did a Disk cleanup from the C drive properties screen, but the 300 GB used space did not change. I then did a Disk Cleanup using the procedure in my McAfee Virus scan program. The C drive file size went back to 128 GB. In both cases of using disk cleanup, I did not see any file types listed that were large enough to cause such a large increase in used space. Where do the archives go when they are deleted from the external HD? If my McAfee Disk Cleanup did not work, I would have had to live with a large loss of available C drive space. It looks like the increase in used C drive space was equal to the two Archives I deleted from the external HD.
Thanks for your interest and help
Charles Ranheim
Charles,
Depending on the size of your recycle bin deleted tib files will either go there if there is room or will be permanently deleted if there isn't or you used shift + delete as your key combination.
Note that you may have more than one recycle bin, by default there will be one for each partition and disk that you have on your system. However, when you click on the recycle bin shortcut on your desktop, they are displayed as amalgamated.
Unless something caused the files to be marked as hidden, I'm not sure why you saw an decrease in free space after the files were deleted.
Thanks for your response. I only do backups once a month, and delete old archives via Acronis . However, I did run into a problem where I happened to notice Acronis was running and I had not started it. It was trying to create a backup to an external HD that was not turned on. I only turn on the HDs when doing a backup. I suspect I failed to turn off the scheduled backup when I did the last normal backup that resulted in Acronis starting the backup on its own. This caused other problems that took a while to get around. I did a delete of an archive manually using Windows delete. It went to the recycle bin as expected, where I just deleted it. When I do my next month end backup, I will pay more attention exactly when the C disk used space increases while doing deletes from Acronis.
Charles,
Just one point which might have no bearing on your situation. When TI deletes an archive, it will make a copy before the deletion and once deletion or consolidation have taken effect it will then delete the temporary archive it made.
I ran a test to see if I could see Acronis put a copy of the deleted file from the external HD. I checked the size of the used space on the C drive, and the size of the external archive out on the HD to be deleted. As soon as I executed the delete from Acronis, I checked the C drive and found no increase in used space. The delete was successful. After shutting down Acronis, I checked the C drive again. It was normal. I suppose there may be some condition where a copy of the deleted file may go to the C drive, but it did not happen for me, unless it did it and immediately deleted it from C drive. As I said before, the unexpected increase in HD space went away after I did a disk cleanup from my McAfee Virus Scan program, even though it was not shown as something to be deleted by running the disk cleanup.
Charles Ranheim