Hard Drive Space Missing

[lancekidd]

Probably not the best subject line, but I have a 500GB SeaGate external HDD. It's really 465GB, but as I'm doing my backups I notice that the sizes of the files do not add up to the total space that is showing full on the drive.

At this moment I have deleted everything on the drive and it is still showing that only 429GB is free of 465. I viewed the hidden folders and files to see if something was hidden and all I see are the files in the screenshot that I uploaded, but they don't show that they're taking any room.

Could it be that that many sectors are bad on the drive? I've run the disk checker before on it and regained all the space, but the same thing keeps happening.

Is there a difference between the quick format option and the full format? Maybe if I do that it would do a better job. Any idea what could be causing this?

Thanks!

 

[xwb]

have you done a chkdsk/f? Sometimes that comes up with badly formed files FOUND.000 etc. Often happens when the device is not detached before the drive is unplugged.

 

[BadBigBen]

The missing space, is most likely reserved by the OS for the "Recycle Bin"...

Differences between a Quick format and a regular format during a "clean" installation of Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302686

Ben
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