Something draining system drive - damnedest thing!

[PsiRadish]

Other than the pagefile, which I have on another volume, is there anything in particular that would steadily eat away at the free space on my system volume (about 4.5 *gigs* disappearing over the course of 6 or so hours) and then shortly after a reboot just suddenly give it all back? Picture it: I'm at 1.34GB free once Windows XP has "settled" after start up (the same amount as when I shut down), and then about 20 minutes later, *fwoomp* (for it surely made such a sound...somewhere), 6.05GB free.

Now, I was doing a lot of audio/video conversion and transcoding with some pretty big files throughout the 6 hours in question, but none of those files were on the system volume. The programs operating on those files were on the system volume, but none of them had created any beastly large temp files on it that I could find, and the drain continued after I'd shut any and all such programs down. Not to mention, the drain is still continuing *now*, after the reboot, as I am now down to 5.96GB free on my system volume despite doing nothing since start up besides creating this post.

[mjc]

Temp folder on that volume?

[nuz]

Try searching for any files created over the past 1 day.

[Sylvander]

1.
(a) There's a great little program named Space Monger that will DYNAMICALLY display the changing space usage before your very eyes.
At least that's what I saw when I sent a huge file to the Recycle Bin, and the map of space usage was dynamically redrawn as I watched.
So this would display space usage changes taking place during a Windows session.

(b) Go to the "Download" tab, then "Betas" to get version 2.1.2-pre3.
This nags somewhat, but not enough to make it really troublesome.

2. To check on changes that begin at or after the start of a session, and persist/remain after the end of a session, what I do is:
(a) Run the FREE version of SyncBack under WINE within the FREE Puppy Linux 4.1.2 official version, or probably even better Muppy Linux 008.4c. [Already includes WINE and various other nice things]
SyncBack can be used to make a backup copy of the contents of a chosen partition [C: say] to some other suitable storage location [I use an external USB HDD].
Once the backup copy is made...
When next you run a scan, it compares the "source" [C:] with the "destination" and lists the "differences" between the two [files/folders altered or eliminated, or created since the last scan].
That could tell you what's changing between one Windows session and the next.

(b) I do the above as a matter of routine.

3. I also use this Janitor VBS script customised to eliminate certain files [TEMP & Recent] of more than a specified age.
Each of those is automatically run as a Windows task at a chosen time every day.
If I was serious and had the time I'd add more to the list.

4. Have you switched off your [Windows] hibernation file? [hiberfil.sys]
That's pretty huge.