Running out of room on C Drive

[_Paz_]

Running out of room on C Drive

I have two internal hard drives, 500GB each.

C (disk 1) 149 GB, 7.47 free
D (disk 1) 315GB, 174 free

E (disk 2) 465 GB, 9.49 free
..............................................................

Operating System & Programs on C drive

D= scratch disk

E = file storage

...............................................................

I can move file storage to other places to free up E drive, which has filled faster than I expected, but I'm not sure what to do about C drive. My first hard drive was 5 Gigs. It held programs, files, everything.

I have figured out that even though I create a file on E for a video project, Premiere Elements 11 is saving PREL files on C drive, so that may be what is hogging so much space. I don't think I can delete PREL files.

I did some reading here recently and learned there is another kind of file created by PE that can be deleted, and I have some 70 GB of them, but today I haven't been successful in finding the thread and I don't remember the file name. That thread was several years old and I wasn't sure it would be applicable now anyway so I wanted to ask before throwing anything out.

thanks for any suggestions,

Paz

[TreeTopsRanch]

Well, I can offer a suggestion but you won't like it. Buy a bigger drive. A "C" drive with only 145 gigs does fill up really fast. You could go to the add/delete program section in Control Panel and delete the programs you no longer use.

[roadsideron]

A hard drive is like a living room with furniture in it. You can't fill a living room completely full of furniture and expect to be able to move around in it. A hard drive is the same. You can't fill it full of files because it's constantly accessing them and moving them around. So, according to most OS makers it not advisable to fill an OS drive more than 75%. Windows can't(won't) defrag an OS drive filled more that 85%. And the more you fill up an OS drive the slower it accesses files so your system slows down. So the rule of thumb is to make sure you only use 75% of the capacity of your OS drive. Storage drives are different since they don't include an active OS system.

[Chris B]

Don't forget the windows disk clean up (available on the tools tab on the drive properties page). Also I think that spacemonger (http://www.sixty-five.cc/download/ - go to the free software tab and download the free 1.4.0 version) is a great way to "see" you drive and where the space has gone.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

My system drive is a 120GB SSD. Only programs and Windows files "live" there. All data files etc. are held on other drives. Even though it is a relatively small drive it never gets fuller than about 60%.

Paz, it looks like your system drive is being cluttered up by a lot of temporary files from somewhere - likely candidates are PrEl render files and other PrEl stuff. Try running CCleaner to see if any space is cleared up. CCleaner is FREE (just love that word) so it is worth a try:-

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

Also open one of your PrEl projects. Under one of the menu items across the top of the screen should be a 'Delete Render Files' or something like that (I am not a Prel user so can't be more specific). That action will also clear out some space. Don't worry about render files as they can always be re-created as necessary.

Final thought, when you start a PrEl project choose the workfiles on a drive other than the C: drive. I think that option comes up on a 'new project' screen where you are asked where you want the project files to be located. Hopefully someone more familiar with PrEl will chime in with more precise info.

[_Paz_]

Thank you for all your replies.

I'm going to be looking over them slowly. Coming off a migraine with extreme nausea, so no food the last couple of days. My head feels like it is exploding every time I move, so please forgive me... I'm still focused on trying to remember what the 70 GB files I have that I may be able to delete are.

Possibly something to do with cache?

I do remember that I deleted Adobe Camera RAW cache, in C drive, and cleared out some room. Surprising since I never store anything in C, so why would Bridge be looking in C drive?

C has only program files and OS. Last time I looked there was a huge amount of space there.

thanks,

Paz

[George Tyndall]

Don't forget the windows disk clean up (available on the tools tab on the drive properties page). Also I think that spacemonger (http://www.sixty-five.cc/download/ - go to the free software tab and download the free 1.4.0 version) is a great way to "see" you drive and where the space has gone.

Chris, the link says PHP is for scanning web servers. Also, the latest version is 1.5.

That will also scan one's C drive?

Thank you.

[roadsideron]

I don't have an SSD drive so I wonder if capacity affects performance like it does on a platter drive? If I remember correctly you don't have to defrag an SSD. Is that correct?

[Peru]

I wonder if capacity affects performance like it does on a platter drive?

http://superuser.com/questions/162155/d ... erformance

[roadsideron]

Well, that cleared that up.

[_Paz_]

I went through my web browsing history line by line and finally found the thread I had read:

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3956&p=38447&hilit=housekeeping#p38447

Nine posts down, coolstuffiniowa wrote:

I did find something that was taking up a LOT of memory - about 130 GB!

this is in the Media Cache File

all these files end with .MACC

is it safe to get rid of these?

I found a lot of them on C drive and deleted them. I now have 38 gigs free on C and was able to defrag. I ran "Advanced System Care 6", which I already have installed based on Steve's recommendation. I'm not sure if this would be an equivalent of running CCleaner or not.

So far all the video I've shot has been toward the goal of learning how to adjust and control my videocams. Nothing of importance. I can delete 95% of them but I need to figure out how to find all the associated files.

I know I'm going to need to set up a better system and I need to understand what files PreEl creates, where it decides to put them and how I can set them up to keep them all together. I can transfer everything on D drive to an external drive and remove the partition so C can be a 500 GB drive if PreEl has to have it.

Oh, I did some looking around in preferences in PreEl 11 and discovered I have not set preferences. Everything is set for C drive. I must have set up preferences on an earlier version of Premiere Elements. No wonder it's such a mess!

Paz

[Chris B]

Don't forget the windows disk clean up (available on the tools tab on the drive properties page). Also I think that spacemonger (http://www.sixty-five.cc/download/ - go to the free software tab and download the free 1.4.0 version) is a great way to "see" you drive and where the space has gone.

Chris, the link says PHP is for scanning web servers. Also, the latest version is 1.5.

That will also scan one's C drive?

Thank you.

Sorry for delayed response - been away this weekend. The software is at the bottom of the "free software" page.

[Bob]

Premiere Elements uses a number of types of temporary work files. The Media Cache files are one type. Temporary files can be safely deleted as PrEl will recreate them if needed. PrEl creates these files at the locations specified in the Preferences under "Scratch Disks". The default setting is "Same as Project". That's probably the best setting for most Premiere Elements users. With that setting, the temporary files are stored in folders in the same location as where you created the project file -- everything is in the same location and it's very easy to manage, cleanup, and delete when the project is finished. For that reason, I'd recommend that you create a separate folder for each project. It's best if you place the projects on a differenct internal disk drive than the system drive.

While you're looking at the Preferences, look at the Media category. I'm not sure if the later versions still have a media cache database (I now use Premiere Pro exclusively and Premiere Elements 7 is that last version I had on my system). If they do, there should be a button to "Clean" the database. The media cache database by default is located on the C: drive and can grow quite large. It's a good idea to clean the database from time to time to get rid of obsolete entries and keep it from growing unnecessarily large.

[_Paz_]

Thanks, Bob,

I'm still working on it. I do have the ability to clean media cache through PreEl 11.

[_Paz_]

It just hit me like a ton of bricks. 'Same as Project' is not the same thing as 'Same as Source.'



I thought since I get my media from my camcorder and save it to my E drive that the E drive is where Premiere Elements 11 was saving things. At least that's the way I thought I was setting things up with PreEl 10. I don't believe I ever set up preferences in PreEl 11. Duh!

I'm trying to start over.

I've been searching through files and have cleared up some 45GB of space on C drive.

I've moved everything from my D drive, the larger partition of a 500GB C/D drive, to an external drive.

I've learned that Partition Magic won't work with Win 7. So far it looks like I cannot simply delete D drive. Hopefully I'll be able to adjust the size of the partitions if PreEl is going to save things in C drive.

How small I should make D if I can move the partition?

On the other hand, I originally thought I would have a good setup:

Operating System and Programs on a 149 GB C drive

Scratch disc on the remaining 350 GB, D drive

All files, image files, video files, everything stored, on E drive, a 500GB second disk.

So what am I missing? How should I set up my two 500 GB discs to work best with Photoshop CS6 and Premiere Elements 11?

thanks,

Paz