Missing HD space?!?!

[jdavism]

Hey everyone,

I was hoping someone might give me some advice. I run WinXP on a 20gig HD. If I "right-click" and go to properties it shows I have 5.53gig used. I don't feel like I am using that much, my computer is pretty much bare bones and I am looking to do a ghost of my HD.

If I go in an check individual size of different folders, like Program folders, My documents etc I cannot find anything to warrant where the majority of the space is being used. For example if I get properties on all sub-directories under C: its only 2.26gigs.

Where could all this HD space be??

Jeff

 

[Assimilate]

some space is lost as a result of the way the hard drive allocates disk space. a real 20gb drive is not really 20 gb, its more something like 18gb.

Its similar to the 10gb drive i used to have. when i checked in windows it showed up as 9.6 gb. i dont think its anything to worry about, but hear what others have to say.

bye

 

[jdavism]

Yeah, the hard drive is 20gig but formats to like 19.1.. My examples were with that factoring in..

I am thinking it must be something else =\

 

[FosTech]

jdavism,

There are a few things that may eat up a fair bit of hard disc space in Windows XP.
They include:
1. Upgrade to XP (from '98) will use 400-500 Mb of space for the backup of the old O/S.
2.System restore will take up to 12% of Hdd space.
3.The Hibernation feature reserves hard disc space.
4. Pagefile will reserve 1.5 times installed Ram by default.
5. Today they usually figure a Mb as 1000 kilo-bytes, not the (true) way of 1024 Kilobytes, or 1,048,576 bytes.
Hope these help explain where the space disappeared.

-Brett

 

[linney]

Have a look at these too.

Cluster Size
This is the smallest amount of hard disk space a file can occupy. Floppies have a cluster size of 512 bytes and hard disks can have a cluster size ranging from 1 kilobyte to 16 kilobytes (sometimes even more). The larger the partition, the larger the cluster size. See Slack Space.

Slack Space
The amount of disk space that is wasted by having a large cluster size. For example, if a 300-byte file is stored on a disk with a cluster size of 1,024 bytes, there will be 724 bytes of slack space that can't be used for any other files. You can see how much space is allocated to a file by typing "DIR /v" at the command prompt.


How to Locate and Correct Disk Space Problems on NTFS Volumes in Windows XP(Q315668)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q315/6/68.asp

The Default Cluster Size for the NTFS and FAT File Systems(Q314878)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q314/8/78.asp

Files Are Larger on FAT Partitions(Q101267)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q101/2/67.asp

Utilities like Disk Cleanup and Defragmenter are a help in maintaining your drive space.

 

[wolluf]

This utility will analyse your disk space for you and display results in various forms - might be of use:-

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stephen.dunn4/ddsetup.exe

 

[xyrx]

The easiest way I find out what the BIG files are on my hard drive is to use the search function. Just open up the search window, click on 'All files and folders', and on the next screen, hit the arrow next to 'What size is it?'. Select 'Large (more than 1Mb)'. Before you search, go to the advanced arrow, and check the top 3, 'Search system folders', 'Search hidden files/folders', and 'Search subfolders'. Once it's done listing all files on your hard drive over 1Mb in size, sort the size column, and you'll see what the biggest files are, hidden or not, on your hard drive.

Fostech had a good point. System restore can eat up that space, especially if you use a laptop, AND if you swap pcmcia cards out frequently.

 

[richardv]

I had this type of problem on my server. My server had 4 GB allocated for the C:. When I right-clicked the C: partition it showed 3.7 GB used. When I looked inside the root of C:, saw that all files used only 1.07 GB. Somebody here on Tek-Tip asked me to check on the tiny files. I found a directory that had 1,500 files using only about 250 K. SEEMED VERY PECULIAR. Since they were unimportant cached files, I deleted half of them to find out that I retrieved about 1 GB.

 

[rs387]

Maybe you have a few lost chains on it? Check it with chkdsk (go to My Computer, right click the drive, select properties, go to Tools, click on Check Now).

 

[jdavism]

Thanks for all the advice guys, I believe most of the space I was looking for was in the pagefile which was like 1 gig. Thanks for all the great suggestions and help!

Take care everyone, and thanks!

 

[wr213]

I have the same problem except that I have 3gb at the most being used but the system says I have 10GB used but I don't know where?! There has to be a way that I can access the location of all my files and I can see where they are. I would also like to know how to slick the drive of all programs and files except the OS. I am not too adept on XP.