We have all been there…we have all suffered some sort of data loss whether it be minimal or catastrophic but either way it hurts. The last drive I lost to mechanical failure was a Maxtor Diamond Max 16 160GB. This drive was chock full up with compressed family home videos, music and legal documents, all very valuable and all very irreplaceable.
Since then I have sworn to never use Seagate or Maxtor drives again and I no longer trust any hard drive to reliably store precious data unless it is powered down and stored in a climate controlled environment. Also, I only trust Western Digital and Hitachi drives because they were the original large format (floor standing) multi-platter, multi-head drives 30-years ago. I love the WD Raptor series for their 10,000 RPM spindle speed, quick seek-times and reliability. WD warrants the Raptor series for 5-years. No, I am not a spokesperson for WD or Hitachi…I just believe in their products.
With so much extra (non-testing) time on my hands here that past dozen months or so I have been experimenting with different data storage scenarios and techniques and have finally come to rely on one methodology and I want to share this with you. Please keep in mind that the paths, files and software listed here are for Windows XP (2003) and may work with Vista or Win7 but I have not personally tested on these, only WinXP64.
(Some of this data has been reproduced and credit goes to the original author.)
Disk Cleanup: deleting unnecessary files
To free some space on your hard disk for better purposes, you have to do a disk cleanup. With the Disk Cleanup utility (Start Menu, All Programs, Accessories, System tools) you have a built in tool to remove many unnecessary files from your hard disk. Select the C: drive and on the first tab check all items to delete.
However, the cleaning is not thorough, especially the 'temporary (internet) files' folders (used files from the last few days will not be cleaned)! It is better to clean them yourself as well, as shown below. Most files are system files and/or hidden, so make sure you can see those type of files in the Windows Explorer (Tools, Folder Options, tab View, enable Display the content of system folders, enable Show hidden files and folders, disable Hide extensions for known file types and disable Hide protected operating system files).
DELETE INDEX.DAT FILES MANUALLY
Disk Cleanup doesn't always work correctly, especially when the index.dat file is corrupt. Use the Windows search function to search for index.dat and delete them. They will be rebuilt by the system at next system restart.
C:\HIBERFIL.SYS (hidden, as big as the main memory)
This file is created by the hibernation option (Control Panel, Power Options, tab Hibernate). With this option you are able to hibernate your computer. When your computer hibernates, it stores the main memory into the hiberfil.sys file on your C: partition before it shuts down. When you turn on the computer, it returns to its previous state by reloading the main memory with the information in the hiberfil.sys. To turn off this heavy disk consuming option, disable the Enable hibernation option on this tab.
C:\System Volume Information (hidden, also on other partitions)
These hidden system folders contain information for the Windows XP System Restore function. When you are finished with the setup of your Windows system and everything is working error free, I advise to turn off the system restore (Control Panel, System, tab System Restore). Enabling the option Turn off System Restore on all drives will empty all System Volume Information folders. It's difficult to remove the empty system folders from NTFS partitions (FAT32 partitions are no problem).
C:\PAGEFILE.SYS (Virtual memory)
The pagefile is only used when your main memory has been consumed by the running applications and more memory is needed. The use of the pagefile is temporary. Disabling the pagefile is only a wise thing to do if the available memory exceeds 512 MB (the use of the pagefile depends on the demand for memory of the running applications). You can also move the pagefile to another (faster) partition
C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch
This folder contains information about the regular started applications. Without any problem, you are allowed to delete the files in this folder (the files in the prefetch folder will be rebuild after a restart of Windows). The prefetch files in this folder are used for 'preloading' applications to start them quicker. At first you will probably notice a slower start of your favorite applications, but this will quickly be restored.
C:\Windows\$NtUninstall...... folders (hidden)
Those hidden "$" folders are waiting (and waiting.....) for a Windows update-uninstall. Of course, this will probably never happen! If Windows is working properly and stable after the latest Windows updates, you can delete those folders. The folder $hf_mig$ is the only exception to this rule. It is advised to keep this folder as it is, although removing it doesn't result in problems.
C:\I386\
C:\Windows\Driver Cache\I386\
C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\I386\
Do you really want to save space? Delete above folders (or burn them on CD), but at your own risk! The I386 folder contains setup files (including hardware drivers). If everything is working properly, you won't need them, but if your system needs a change you might!
C:\Windows\Downloaded Installations\
C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\
These folders contain the setup files of downloaded and installed applications and Windows updates. The last one contains the downloaded Windows updates, which are there in strange names without any extension. With most of those files you can add MSI or EXE and run them separately. Saving these files makes it possible to patch them on another Windows system or Windows setup files.
Other temporary files (if still present, including the index.dat file):
C:\Documents and Settings\your username\Local Settings\Temp
C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp
C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\Temp
C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
C:\Documents and Settings\your username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
C:\Documents and Settings\your username\Local Settings\History
C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\History
C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\History
After this initial deep cleaning you can use a free utility called Crap Cleaner and you can get it here: hxxp://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download (If you don’t wish to donate click on “Download from FileHippo”) I use this little gem several times a day and absolutely love it. It even has a Registry cleaner and Windows uninstaller built in.
You should have a fairly clean system now but there is always room for more tweaking. If you have a lot of personal files in your My Documents folder that you do not use on a daily basis, move these to another secondary storage drive or device i.e. floppy, USB pen drive or data CD with multi-session enabled so you can continue writing to it until it is full.
At this point you may be asking yourself; “What is the real purpose of all of this?” In two words - “Data Security” I absolutely abhor losing data and I really hate having to reinstall windows so therefore I clean, defragment and backup a couple of times a week.
Defragmenting:
There are two sides of the camp on this subject. Some say it is a waste of time and detrimental to the hard drive but I say otherwise. The act of defragmenting puts all the data in continuous string making seek and read time for that data much quicker. If a drive is heavily fragmented it also slows down the writing of data to the fragmented drive. For defragging I like another little Freeware program called MyDefrag and you can get it here: hxxp://www.mydefrag.com/Manual-DownloadAndInstall.html
Use this program daily, weekly and monthly on all your drives to keep them healthy and ready for backup.
Backup: the art of securing your data
For this task I like to use DriveImage XML and you can get it here: hxxp://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm
DriveImage XML is free and works like a charm. You can image your entire C: partition and compress it heavily (100%) so the images don’t take up too much space. The GUI is pretty straight forward, easy to operate and can be run from Bootable media like CD, DVD, USB or natively from Windows.
I use it weekly to make a compressed image of my C: drive and store the image on a secondary drive D: I also use it to make an image of a fresh Windows install after all the Windows Updates and Service Packs are installed and running smoothly. I then burn that image to DVD for archival purposes. It is much quicker and easier to restore this clean, fresh image with DriveImage XML than to go through the Bill Gates shuffle with Updates and Hotfixes. I actually do this twice; the second one is after all my hardware drivers are installed.
Well, I better go find something else to do but I leave you with hopes that this little bit of information can somehow help each and everyone of you.
Happy Imaging!