Hard drive used space incorrectly reported.

[garebo]

I have an external firewire drive with a 60 gig hard drive in it. Under the NTFS system it has always shown up as a 55.7 gig hard drive. Thats ok but what happens is that the amount of space i have used and the amount showing left to use are at odds.
For instance, i should have 55.7 gigs of space available.
Right now my drive says that I have less than 18 gigs free, meaning I have used up 38 gigs. But when i add up the total size of the files and folders on my drive, it only comes up to about 9 gigs. I realize that even an empty recycle bin takes up space, but I have set it to only 3% of the drive. I am not running goback either.
So why is it that I am short about 28 gigs of drive space?
thanks

 

[micker377]

Where is your virtual memory file? Are you using Norton System SystemWorks?

 

[garebo]

I dont know where the vm file is, what is the name?
Yes, i am using NSW, although i dont have the goback portion of it installed. I use a separate version of goback and its only on my c drive.
thanks

 

[garebo]

my page file is 384 min and 768 max and it is on the c drive, no page file on the drive in question, which is an external firewire drive.

 

[micker377]

The reason I ask about Norton is: when you empty your recycle bin, the files are still saved in "Norton Protected Files". Right click on the recycle bin icon, and left click on "Empty Norton Protected Files. You will be given a Norton Protected window, purge all.

 

[garebo]

Sorry, i should have mentioned that i have purged all files, protected as well, recycle bin totally empty.
I had this prob before. If I recall correctly i re-formatted my drive and all was well. However, at some point I begin to notice that the amount of drive space left doesnt jive with what should be there. That is where i am again, of course. I didnt notice exactly when that happened. It was over a long period of time, maybe even a year.

 

[garebo]

I didnt think it mattered so i didnt point out that i often fire up my puter and dont turn on the external drive. I only use this drive for downloading files, storage, and backup, so if i am not doing those items then i dont turn the drive on.

 

[garebo]

I found out that a few of the folders on my external firewire drive have huge files in them and are not being reported correctly. When i copy them to my c drive the correct size is reported.
Both drives are NTFS
I wonder if it has anything to do with a program that i have that allows a small icon in place of the standard windows folder? I wonder if that could cause this false reporting of fize size.
I am starting to think that the total reported size is correct now, since i have folders that say they are 20 mb in size but in fact they are 5 gigs in real size.

 

[Freestone]

I would suggest backing up any important data now since it is obvious something is wrong with the filesystem. You could then try running chkdsk from a command prompt and see if that reports any errors.

 

[garebo]

What i did do was i copied the files to my c drive, where my c drive shows the file size to be 22 gigs, where my other drive was showing that 22 gigs to be 20 mb!
Then i put the files back on my external firewire and they showed up correctly, in a new folder, as 22 gigs.
I suspect the prob was something to do with the icon that I had put in place of the regular folder.
Just to be sure, I made a full copy of my external drive and then re-formatted it, ran chkdsk and all is well, so i put my files and folders back and they show up correctly.

They always did show the correct total, the only problem being one folder that had 22 gigs and was only showing that it had 20mb, but again, the total was correct as far as the drive showing that i had 56 gigs to work with and that a total of 35 gigs was used and 21 gigs left that were usable.
So the only prob was the one folder not showing the correct total of files inside it. Again, it was the one folder that I had put an icon to replace the folder icon.
I dont know if that caused the prob but it looks like it is the culprit. Only time will tell now. I will leave it alone and i wont change the look of the folder and see what happens. I dont really have enough experience to say that this was the prob as its only ever happened on this one external drive.
Thanks for the help, advice, info!

 

[Freestone]

If would have been interesting to see if chkdsk reported an error if it had been run prior to the re-format.

Out of curiosity, what is the name of the program you use "that allows a small icon in place of the standard windows folder"?

 

[garebo]

To Freestone

Yes, i should have run chkdsk before but i got lazy! Least i'm honest about it, lol.

On the icon issue, I use a very small prog called "rainbow folders". Its free and its a no-install prog to boot.
However, and i didnt mention this earlier as I thought I was using rainbow folders when I realized later that I was using win xp pro's own icons that you get by right-clicking and going to properties\customize\change icon.
I should have realized that as the rainbow folder prog will only change the color of the folder, it doesnt provide actual icons.
I have been remodelling my home for the last 3 months and so i have my construction hat on right now, my computer operator hat is on the shelf, so i am making errors i wouldnt normally be making. Good part is that i am basically done and can get back where I belong, on a computer!

I do believe that the icon change may have been the cause as the only folder that had the size reporting issue was the folder that was changed in appearance. The other folders reported their sizes correct. Also, when i copied the contents of the files to a a new folder, the same thing happened, the reported size was wrong. This leads me to suspect that its a prob with my win xp pro icon changing sub-prog and my external firewire device. Just a guess at this point, so i will have to keep an eye out and see. If it doesnt happen again, then i can be fairly certain that was the issue, maybe, lol.

thanks

 

[clambert11]

I had the same problem w/ my 160 GB external drive. The problem was kicking my ass. Turns out I had the Norton Recycle Protection enabled my laptop and wasn't aware. My desktop was oblivious and didn't care. Once I purged the files on my laptop, all was fine.

You're going to have to check any PC that your external drive was connected to. Purge the files on each machine.

If it's just one PC you are connecting the drive to, I'm not really sure what to tell you.

Good luck!

 

[garebo]

I dont think that was the problem as this is a stand-alone machine, not networked.
Also, i purged all the norton protected files and deleted standard recycle bin files from my c drive and also from my external drive and this didnt change anything on my external drive.

I am starting to think that the problem could lie in one of two areas:

1 I turn my external on and off manually and perhaps I should wait til the pc is turned off before i turn the external drive off, perhaps i am interfering with windows or a prog.
2 The other thing, and i hesitate to mention for obvious reasons, but I have been known to download p2p, bittorrent, that sort of thing, from time to time. There could be something there. I manually scan all downloaded files for virus and other problems, but you never know.

I think there is a possibility that it is probably area 1, but i am not sure of anything at this point.
I have reformatted the drive and will keep an eye on it.
I do remember that about 5 yrs ago, while running win98se, i had a similar prob where a folder said it was 3 gigs in size when in fact it was only about 5 mb, at a time when our hard drives were only 5 to 10 gigs in total size. At the time the file in question was one i had downloaded from a ware_ site. I cant even print the bad word, lol. I had a heck of a time deleting the file, prolly had to use safe mode, or possibly even reformatted to get rid of the file that time.
Any other ideas as to what is causing this prob?
Could be a prob with the external drive circuitry itself, of course.


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