Hard drive showing as full but 20GB are hidden somewhere

[tkambui]

I have a Lenovo 300 laptop with Vista. It's showing that my hard drive is practically full, but the contents I can see add up to about 20 gigs less than the hd used space shows. I ran a spyware scan, but that did not help. Any suggestions?

 

[DrB0b]

Turn on hidden files and folders, probably something like a pagefile.sys/hiberfile.sys taking up a bit of space.

After turning on hidden files you can use TreeSize to see whats taking up what space:

http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

Learning - A never ending quest for knowledge usually attained by being thrown in a situation and told to fix it now.

 

[tkambui]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that show hidden files is on.

 

[flyboytim]

Probably Superhidden Journal files for NTFS in the c:\$EXTEND folder that you don't know about. C:\$Extend\$UsnJrnl:$J:$DATA is often the biggest. There may be a $QUOTA file there too. Windows 7 and later supposedly defragment these files in the background, but not Vista and before.

If you run a defragger like the free Puran Defrag, these metadata files show up as the huge fragmented files that stop the disk being properly optimised. Once you have identified them, it is possible to delete them with the Fsutil command: fsutil usn deletejournal /n C: and other commands.
After deletion, the files will be rebuilt by the OS, but hopefully much smaller at first.
Discussion here:

http://arrowquick.com/blog/2011/01/25/windows-drive-maintenance-with-special-files/

Technet library pages:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc788042(v=ws.10).aspx

http://www.puransoftware.com/Puran-Defrag-Download.html

 

[BadBigBen]

Q: do you have a 160GB HDD (or partition)?

if that is the case, then it would add up that about 20GB space has seemingly disappeared, as that is almost 12% (max default value) that Windows reserves for RESTORE POINTS...



Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[linney]

Try running ChkDsk to check your drive for errors. Right-click your Drive icon/ Properties/ Tools/ Error Checking. Try it first by not checking either box (this will run it in a Read-only mode) to see if it flags any hard drive or file problems. If it does, restart it by ticking both boxes, and rerun it to allow it to attempt to fix any found problems.



You might get a few GB back if you run the Disk Cleanup tool and use the "More Options" tab to remove all but the most recent System Restore Points.


You don't really want Restore Points going back too far as they will more than likely uninstall all programs or settings you have changed since your "go back point" causing you more problems than it may fix.

The average restore point is 25mb+ with a "first in, first out" policy on restore points. They contain mainly deleted or altered exe, dlls, shortcuts and a registry backup and user profile details. They do not contain users data.

Keeping restore points for a week seems adequate. Amount of disk space used depends on the size of your restore points. Some restore points can be as large as 500mb after major alterations to a system (ie a new service pack or several hefty program installs, or running SFC /Scannow).

Other things that you can clean out via the Disk Cleanup tool include, Temporary Internet Files, Recycle Bin, and other Temp folders, and also queued error reports.

You could also consider purchasing and extra hard drive.