Lost Space??

[raven]

Ok, i was working on my computer one night, and i was in the process of extracting a set of .rar files. Then when i finish extracting them, i check my HD to see hwo much space it has left. So, knowing what i had previously, i had a rough idea of how much space i would have ( i was supposed to have about 30 or so gigs free ) . But now when i checked, i only had 1.6 gigrs free. So.. i go the my computer and right click my drive and then properties. It says the same thing. only 1.6Gigs free. so then i get a bti worried and i start to delete files, so now i got it down to around 30gigs free, but im supposed to have around 50 gigs free. So now i go run deframenter and disk check and hope that they would do something, but nothing.. i rebooted, and still nothing, my drive only has 30gigs of free space.

So to investigate this further, i open up my windows explorer, and then manually start counting the gigs. Out ouf a a possible 130gigs, i only have 30 gigs free, where to as i should have 50 gigs free.

Right now im running Norton Disk Doctor, and hoping it will figure something out for me. Im running windows XP SP1, and everything else is in my sig.

So what could have dramatically taken up this much space? any ideas? If worse comes to worse, im gona try the WD diagnostic tool, and see what that comes up with. But im already missing ym missing 20 gigs of space :( This drive was working fine untill just a few days ago. and i hadnt done anythign but extract files since then.


Raven

[Dubbin1]

Do you have all this on one partition?

[raven]

Yes i do.

My computer is set up like so:
36gig raptor
- one partition - main drive

160 gig WDSE
- first partition 130 gigs
- Second parition 20 gigs (empty)


So Windows still recognizes all those sizes, but the free space on my 130gig has been deminished, and i cant find out why. Ive even counted everythign manually, and about 20 gigs is unaccounted for. Windows thinks that those 20gigs are being used by something, but i cant seem to figure out what tho, since i havent in the last few days put anything on my computer that would take up that amount of space.

[shortyes]

empty out your trash bin and temp files. Sometimes that is the cause of it. If you have norton or system restore..

There are a lot of places where a few GBs here and there can hide

[electromagnetic]

Here's what I do when I need to get back space: Do a file search for all files and folder (including hidden) for anything above 10 Mb or so. Then sort the results by size, I'm alsways finding old installers, old ISO images, etc.

Currently I have a 30 gig and a 100 gig and trying to cope with about 4 gigs free between the 2. A guy I work with has 2 120 gig drives in RAID1 and uses hardly any of it.:mad:

[bluediamond]

Make sure that you can see your hidden files, also it might be related to your system restore files.

[Xaotic]

You can also get a freeware utility called Treesize here:

http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

It will show the actual sizes of the directories. It makes it a bit easier to track down.

[raven]

Thanks for the Advice guys. Ive finally figured out what was taking up all the space. Apparently, when i deleted the files, norton took control of them and classified them as protected, so then the reason i couldnt see them was because they looked like they were deleted but norton really hid them from me. I just remembered about the protected files section when shorteyes mentioned the recycling bin, but really, i have never used the protected files section, so i didnt think anythign of it.


anyways, xaotic, i like that program tree, its really need.. it would have saved me the trouble of getting a calculator and adding up all the sizes of my folders.

[Mower]

Same problem here dudes on a ****y 6Gig HDD, only 2 used but showing 900Mb free. Antything that can cause this? Thanx.:)

[shadowdr]

When using norton you can right click,go down to properties and tick the "use standard recycle bin" to keep it from hogging space.You can also set how much drive space it will use by percent for each drive if you like.
I like to erease my files using this (http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/) program.It adds itself to the right click menue and has options for multi pass ereasure for a complete shredding.

[electromagnetic]

Shift-Delete