missing hdd space

[FamousMoe]

Windows Xp tells me that my 114 gb harddrive has only 10 gb left. and 103 gb used. that didnt sound round. so I looked through all my folders(even the hidden ones) and added up how much space each folder took up.

Its only around 88gb. Somewhere along the lines im missing about 15 gb and i have no idea where it could be. The hdd isnt partitioned, and none is going to virtual memory either...its my slave drive.

[squeech]

Remember that there are also "super hidden" system folders that don't show up just by clicking "show hidden files and folders" in the folder options. There's that special options for "hide protected operating system files" that could be unchecked to find the other folders.

[FamousMoe]

well thats good to know. first i ever heard about the super hidden files heh. Well anyways. i unchecked it. and there is a gig in there. that still leaves like 14 gigs somewhere. I dont think a defragmentation would free up that much either...

[paul9]

fat 32 drives can report a wrong size if there is a small error on the drive, which scandisk fixes, is it the same for ntfs, in which case a chkdsk could be the answer. also investigate the reserved space for the recycle bins (one per account) system restore, and possibly internet explorer cache. (i remember an ie 4 cache bug which could fill up your hard drive, back in the olden days ) i don't know if the space for these things is taken off your available space in advance. hmm slave drive, then probably not ie cache, then.

[Peter M]

This is not about errors, but about the file system being organized in blocks. E.g. if a file system block were 1 KByte and all your files were only 1 byte, your HDD would be full although your files cover only 1/1000th of it. In reality, the blocks are larger, and the average expected loss is 1/2 * blocksize * number-of-files.

[FamousMoe]

well...I turned off system restore for that drive. it said it was taking up about 14k mb. so i figured that is what it was. anyways, i turned it off. and that space is still missing. so...im gonna try the chkdsk. any more ideas?

oh yea. the recycle bin was also taking up 4 gigs. and i stopped that. but i still dont see my d: getting any larger. grrrr

[FamousMoe]

well...chkdsk didnt work either. any more suggestions?

[Starfury_2260]

Might wanna check out Spacemonger. If theres some stuff taking up alot of extra space, you'll be able to find it with this program.

[FamousMoe]

i got that program...still...nothing that doesnt show up in the folders regularly. I even used that program and added up everything (and even rounded up from all decimals). and got 92, and windows tells me im using 104! *dies*

[Peter M]

Did you even read what I wrote? Your files may be 92 GBytes in size, but they use up more HDD space. Nothing wrong at all!