[matt120]

I have been ripping all my music using EAC and FLAC on my nwe WIndows Vista computer. The problem I have is that my hard drive is filling up with some kind of temp file everytime I rip a CD. I'm actually an IT technician but this has me baffled!

If I unhide all folders and select all the directories in my hard drive only 50GB has been used, but on the my computer page it shows 80GB has gone!!!

All my temp folder are empty, and clear diskspace gives me 11mb more.

Anyone got any ideas???

 

[LeonvB]

1. Slack. Esp. small files occupy more space than their actual size. In the past slack would eat away 30% of your space. When using larger files, this will drop to around 10%. With video & huge audio files it drops to <1%.
2. System files. Showing System directories/files is a separate setting. Fi. the recycler bin is a system directory. It stores all files you deleted through the explorer. Clear the bin to regain space.

 

[Nebby]

Try downloading Windirstat to see the disk space usage of your files; it should be pretty clear what files are taking up all the space

 

[matt120]

thanks Nebby, I've been trying to find that program for ages!!

That to can only total up half the missing space.....its driving me crazy !!

There must be something hidden in vista!!!

Recycle bins are emtpy, and the i was quoting the size on disc rather than file sizes. It's deffiently from ripping as it goes down with every disc I rip. Files are actually compressed and saved to another drive

 

[sejarzo]

Start EAC, click on EAC>Compression Options>External Compression and look just below "Bit rate".....is the option to "Delete WAV after compression" checked, or unchecked?

EAC must create a temp file of the wav it rips from the CD for FLAC to do the compression, and if EAC is not set to delete that file, it's going to be sticking around somewhere in your system.

I'm not running Vista, just XPSP2.

EDIT: I just went into my EAC setup, unchecked the "Delete WAV option", and ripped one track, then immediately searched for new files created today, including in hidden folders. EAC and FLAC didn't create anything but the .wav and .flac files.

 

[fordgtlover]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LeonvB /img/forum/go_quote.gif 1. Slack. Esp. small files occupy more space than their actual size. In the past slack would eat away 30% of your space. When using larger files, this will drop to around 10%. With video & huge audio files it drops to <1%. 2. System files. Showing System directories/files is a separate setting. Fi. the recycler bin is a system directory. It stores all files you deleted through the explorer. Clear the bin to regain space.

The problem is unlikely to be slack because the ripping process creates large files rather than many small ones. File slack is a problem when you write out many small files that don't occupy entire clusters.

 

[matt120]

thanks for the inout so far...eac is set to delete the temp file after compression....

I have just been reading about Windows Shadow Copy which creates snap shots of your folders so if documents are deleted accidentally you can retrieve them. If you right click on any folder in Vista and go properties, you get a tab called previous versions which has a snapshot of the directory everytime something gets changed/deleted.

I reckon everytime EAC automatically deletes the tempoary file windows is making a backup of it just incase.....hence all the missing disk space. Now i just have to work out hwat happens when your drive is full, or how wise it is to disable it!

 

[LeonvB]

Quote:

The problem is unlikely to be slack

Correct, but the OP initially wasn't quite clear if he was talking about real usage or file size. He wouldn't be the first to forget about cluster size vs. file size problems.

For shadow copy: see link to recover space
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Window....mspx?mfr=true

 

[sejarzo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by matt120 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have just been reading about Windows Shadow Copy which creates snap shots of your folders so if documents are deleted accidentally you can retrieve them. If you right click on any folder in Vista and go properties, you get a tab called previous versions which has a snapshot of the directory everytime something gets changed/deleted.

Didn't know about that.....and here is what would concern me, from the Wikipedia page:

"The Windows Vista version of System Restore is also now based on Shadow Copy. Prior to Windows Vista, System Restore was based on a file-based filter that watched changes for a certain set of file extensions, and then copied files before they were overwritten."

Seems to me that one might have to be rather knowledgeable and selective in disabling Shadow Copy to avoid compromising System Restore in Vista.

But when I looked at the page that LeonvB linked above, it seems as if it's not enabled for external disks by default, because specific instructions are given for enabling it on external disks. Where does EAC create the temporary .wav file in your setup......on your internal drive?

 

[fordgtlover]

Shadowcopy... another example of Microsoft's attempts to be too clever causing problem - the recycle bin works fine, and as for making backups of files, users who lose something important generally remember to take backups. Just like life, mistakes teach us lessons.

Maybe they should start releasing versions of Windows 'for people who have a clue' and Windows 'for people who need to be saved from themselves'.

Please don't be offended by this. I'm (sort of ) joking.

I have no real problem with MS, but each Windows gets little more complicated to work around their features.

 

[LeonvB]

Quote:

Microsoft's attempts to be too clever causing problem

Well, to their merrit: you CAN turn it off. Plus as you might have read, there's simply room reserved for the backups, if you grow beyond the limit it drops the oldest versions.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/0...windows-vista/

 

[ttol]

If you don't want to turn off system restore, you can also limit how much space system restore/shadow copy/previous versions occupy.

Open command prompt with admin rights and you can use the following command to check how much space shadow storage is currently using

vssadmin List ShadowStorage

If you want to set the limit for C: drive to, say, 8GB:
vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /On=C: /For=C: /MaxSize=8GB

 

[matt120]

thanks again for the input. I always used to disable system restore on my old machines, but with vista I thought it might be worth keeping it on incase I installed a program or driver it wasn't happy with.

Sejarzo - My temp drive is currently my mainc: drive and then the flacs are written to D, but I might connect an external drive as the temp folder for eac just so shadow copy doesnt automatically back up the file when its deleted.

I know it only uses a certain amount of disk space, and overwrites older versions to contain the most recent, but...and this is a big but....if the space allocation is full and I rip one CD, that can then mean i lose 700mb of backed up system files, drivers and docs which maybe unrecoverable compared to a cd i have a hard copy of already backed up!

Let me know what you think...Matt