Syntrillium Backup Forums :: View topic

Winch · Posted - Fri Oct 19, 2001 7:16 am

I just ran out of disk space! I have an 18 gig HD and I've been doing a lot of opening large MP3 files (from CD) and splitting them apart and saving to folder on disk. The folder on disk only has about 1 gig. I have 11.5 gig in my \Temp file. I have lots of CEPnnn.TMP files. Can they be deleted or is there a proper way to release them. Shouldn't CE2K be freeing them at session close?

RossW · Location: USA

For the most part, you can (and regularly should) delete anything in your Windoze Temp folder. If it's needed again, an app will re-build the file. I s'pose there may be a few exceptions to this, but I very seldom have problems doing this each week or so, just prior to de-fragging the drive.

Winch · Posted - Fri Oct 19, 2001 7:38 am

If I execute diskcleanup from under C:\PROPERTIES it doesn't clean them up. I took the default when I installed CE2k and here is where they are:
C:\Documents and Settings\winke04\Local Settings\Temp.
Should they be somehwere else so that they will get automatcially cleaned up?

jonrose · Location: USA

Hi Winch,

If you are talking about Windoze's "diskcleanup" function, it can be pretty worthless.

I'd suggest that, from time to time, you just open Explorer and navigate to any temp directories you have, highlight unnecessary files, then hit the delete key. Fast, efficient, and certain death for worthless files.

All the best... -Jon
:-)

Syntrillium M.D. · Location: USA

hi Winch. By all means, delete CEP's temp files...Frankly, they should be 'released' everytime you close the application. However, as part of the crash recovery, the temp files are actually retained if you have a crash and then need to restore your session. Those temp files will stay in the assigned temp folder even afterwards, and must be removed manually.

For the easiest access, we usually recommend creating a discrete temp folder, usually on the root of your drive, something like D:\ceptemp. This way, you can get to them fast and easy and you don't have to worry about sifting through other windows temp files.

---Syntrillium, M.D.

djlyon · Location: Romania

Here'sa HINT (all above remains):
I guess most people use the default c:\windows\temp directory as temp. Don't just delete the files in any temp\ dir you have. Delete the folder and then create it again.
Here's why:
-> if you just delete the files - some of you might remember - they're not properly deleted, they're just marked as deleted. This is done by replacing the 1st letter of the filenames with a special character. But then when that directory is accessed for any read/write operation, the OS reads the whole directory files, including the name of the deleted files, and ONLY shows you the `normal` files. This opeation is transparent for the user, but it takes (little) time for the OS to do it. Imagine this (little) operation done fast repeteadly many times. We DO have a delay. ! When files in a directory are deleted, they're not re-sorted so the deleted ones will not go to the end of the list! No! So the OS must read every filename... I have seen this CLEARLY on old 386/486 cpu equiped pc's... And we do want maximum speed for CEP, don't we ? Smile

-> if you delete and re-create the directory, due to disk fragmentation (even 0.01 matters!) the directory will be created on another cluster (this is the allocation unit name), which will have 99.99% chances to be `empty`.
Now, I don't know if when you create a directory, the cluster allocated for it is or is not deleted before by the OS...

As an add-on to jon rose:
The safest way do delete files in temp without damaging any applications running, is by closing all applications and then going to see the /temp dir. Any files in there are `forgotten` in one way or the other.

Edited by - djlyon on 10/19/2001 12:20:51 PM

Edited by - djlyon on 10/19/2001 12:22:01 PM

beetle · Location: USA

You may want to get a file shredder or some program that will overwrite those clusters with alternate 0's and 1's to totally zero out the used clusters.

Graeme · Member Location: Spain

Just to add a general note to this, when Windows crashes (a problem some people here seem to have) it will leave a lod of its own temp files lying around. They are usually easy to identify as they often have a tilde (~) in the extant.

If you're runnning out of space, this might be another fruitful source :-)