windows.edb

[syfch]

Hi All,

My C drive is running out of space. Thanks to everything I was able to quickly find out that I have a huge windows.ebd file (~450G)

My question is not directly related to everything. I'd appreciate any help and I understand if it gets removed from the forum.
I have a 8T external hard drive and I didn't disable indexing this drive. Is this the cause of the large windows.edb?
Any suggestions on how to reduce windows.edb safely?
Also, when I use everything is it wise to disable indexing large external drives? I don't mind the scanning time.

Thanks a lot.

[harryray2]

If memory serves me correctly it's to do with Windows indexing service. The file is OK to delete as Windows just rebuilds it.

If you don't want to have the file grow, disable windows indexing, which, in all honesty, is crap anyway.

For disk space it's also worth checking to see if hibernate is disabled and make sure that there is no very large .dmp file.

[horst.epp]

Thats not related to Windows indexer.
Its a file created by Echange server or Outlook clients.
Sorry my mistake.

The next Windows 11 versions will store the index in Windows.db as SQLite database.

[therube]

(
On my end...

Code: Select all

1.45 GB DataStore.edb
  40 MB Windows.edb
   8 MB tmp.edb

I have no idea what any of that is for.
It would appear the file sizes are unchanged from when my system was first set up.

If I look at Indexing Options, the only things enabled are:
Favorites, Internet Explorer History, & Start Menu

Given that I have no "Favorites" & don't use IE...
I believe ? that Start Menu is needed to be able to use the, well Win7 has one - don't know about other OS, (I'll call it) "Start Menu" search - like to search for "index" [to find, Indexing Options].
)

[syfch]

Thank you all so much for helping out.

I have been using everything for a couple of years now, I'd disable the windows indexing right away if I knew I could.
After disabled everything, my windows.edb reduced to ~130MB (from 450GB! )
Thank you Harryray2, I didn't know I can just delete the edb file. I also deleted hiberfil.sys which was ~13GB.
There is also a pagefile.sys, which is about 16GB, I need to know more about it before removing it.
I am so glad that I've got so much space back.

For those who are interested in what I did, I followed some of the steps in two videos:
(to remove hiberfil.sys) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8RNf_T ... oubleChute
(to disable indexing) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuG_Dvs ... el=GMODISM

Thanks!

[syfch]

(
On my end...

Code: Select all

1.45 GB DataStore.edb
  40 MB Windows.edb
   8 MB tmp.edb

I have no idea what any of that is for.
It would appear the file sizes are unchanged from when my system was first set up.

If I look at Indexing Options, the only things enabled are:
Favorites, Internet Explorer History, & Start Menu

Given that I have no "Favorites" & don't use IE...
I believe ? that Start Menu is needed to be able to use the, well Win7 has one - don't know about other OS, (I'll call it) "Start Menu" search - like to search for "index" [to find, Indexing Options].
)

For me, I was running a program that writes a lot of files to the external drive, I think windows.edb bloated up because it keeps indexing the new files. After I disabled the indexing, CPU seemed to run more efficiently too (judging visually from task manager).

[harryray2]

@syfch..
Leave pagefile.sys alone, it can be turned off or adjusted, but it's better not to.

There is also datastore.edb .
This is to do with Windows update, I deleted and disabled mine a while back.

I use Windows 7 so there wasn't much point keeping it, however, even while Win7 updates were still coming through it was taking up so much space I disabled it.
By deleting it though, you will lose the update history.

I'm not sure how this works on Win 10 and 11 but I assume it serves the same purpose.

System restore can take up a lot of space as well, but while it's better not to disable it, it can be restricted to how much space it uses and it's worth looking at f you have a lot of older restore points.

[syfch]

@syfch..
Leave pagefile.sys alone, it can be turned off or adjusted, but it's better not to.

There is also datastore.edb .
This is to do with Windows update, I deleted and disabled mine a while back.

I use Windows 7 so there wasn't much point keeping it, however, even while Win7 updates were still coming through it was taking up so much space I disabled it.
By deleting it though, you will lose the update history.

I'm not sure how this works on Win 10 and 11 but I assume it serves the same purpose.

System restore can take up a lot of space as well, but while it's better not to disable it, it can be restricted to how much space it uses and it's worth looking at f you have a lot of older restore points.

Thanks for the information on pagefiles.sys and datastore.edb. I will keep them then. There is enough space for now.