20 gig of space missing from drive (recycler issue)

[Arcadi]

I have a home built Windows XP Pro machine with two drives both formatted with NTFS. This machine is part of a workgroup, not a domain. I keep the OS and programs on the C:\ drive, and store files on the d:\ drive.

I am the only user on this machine, and have renamed the default admin account and use that account exclusively. I have the folder options set to show all hidden and system files.

I recently noticed while trying to make space on my d:\ drive that there appears to be 20 gig unaccounted for. I have 14 gig of files, on a 40 gig drive, but only have 6 gig free. I've run disk cleanup, emptied the recycle bin and have run scandisk and defrag, to no effect.

Now here's the odd thing. When running the defrag on the d:\ drive, the report said that there were files that could not be defragmented and listed several files in folders with SIDs for names in the recycler folder. I can not see this recycler folder from Windows Explorer or from a command prompt. I can go to the command prompt and do cd recycler and get int the folder, but once there I still can't see anything when doing dir. I can't attrib -h *.* and I can't del *.*.

I believe the problem is cause because I recently reimaged the c:\ drive, and must have deleted some items from the d:\ drive and not emptied the recycle bin before I did it, so these files are stored in the recycle bin under a SID that no longer exists on this machine.

I have already tried putting my user into all the built in user groups available on the system. I knew this wouldn't help, but did anyways just to beat my head against the wall.

My question is, is there some way to set rights so that my current user can see and delete these files so that I do not have to format the entire hard drive. If not is there any other resolution short of formatting or am I stuck?

Thanks to anyone who reads this.


Arcadi

 

[Seegee]

You can type %recycle% in Windows Explorer to get to the Recycle folder from within XP GUI.

Questions, What size is the other Hard Drive? Do you have more than one partition on each drive? If you do have more than one parition on the drives, are the other partitions formatted? Have you done a Virus Scan?When booting the PC if S.M.A.R.T. is enabled does it report any problems?

I defragged last night and got the same report about some files could not be defragmented. I looked on the MSKB (Microsoft Knowledge Base) and couldn't find anything about it.

 

[Arcadi]

Because I don't use that computer on the internet, I don't have an antivirus running on it.

The C:\ drive is a single hard drive that is 8 gig. the d:\ drive is a hardware raid (striped) of two 20 gig drives (the motherboard is a P4 Soyo Ultra and has IDE Raid onboard) 40 gig (formats to just over 38.8) and is set up as one partition. The Raid appears to be working fine. It is set up before windows boots, and I have made no changes to it since first setting up the computer. I did have to install the Motherboard software to allow the Raid to be seen by windows, but if this were a problem with the RAID, I wouldn't be able to view files that were on the drive before reimaging the c:\ drive, and I can play these files with no problems.

I use the computer for video capture, so almost all the files on the drive are 400 to 600 meg each, and I think there are only about 20 files on this drive total, so I don't think it's an issue cluster size. I think th reason some of the fiiles couldn't be defragmented is also because of their size, and I'm not worried about that.

I didn't mention this, but I can see the Recycle Bin for the D:\ drive, and it is Empty.


The problem appears to be that these files are in a folder belonging to another SID, one that no longer exists. I want to see if there's a way that my current Admin user can get rights to see/manage/delete these files.

 

[Turkbear]

Hi, Wouldn't RAID'ed drives only give you half as much space as the 2 drives have between them?

2 20Gb drives would only show 20Gb total after the RAID was set up, I think, so your results would be correct 20-14 = 6 free...

 

[Arcadi]

Turkbear, if the RAID were a mirrored raid this would be the case. A striped raid allows the use of all 40(38.8) gig.


Windows sees this drive as being 38.8 gig in size. The problem is, although it sees it as a 38.8 gig drive, if I add up the file size of all the files on the drive the total 14 gig, but windows show me as having used almost 33 gig of space.

 

[Turkbear]

Hi again, Thanks - the variants of RAID can get me very confused..I never use Striping due to the possible data loss if 1 of the striped disks dies...

 

[linney]

Can you apply this to the folder (or parent folder) that you wish to access?


HOW TO: Take Ownership of a File or Folder in Windows XP (Q308421)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q308/4/21.asp

And for what it is worth you could read about the Desktop.ini file in articles here.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Riddler+hidden+desktop+windows

 

[Arcadi]

A-ha! I have solved the problem.

The one annoying thing about XP is it's tendancy to take for granted that you have infinite amounts of hard drive space. It had used that drive for system restore information on the previous image, and all that restore information was still there, hidden from the current user. I made myself owner of the drive, ran disk cleanup and then cleared out all but the last restore point. Bingo, I now have nearly all of that 20 gig of hard drive space back.