• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Missing 80 gigs on hard drive

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

yzfspecvr6

Member
Joined
Apr 10, 2010
Just had windows vista 64bit installed windows 7 64bit started from fresh wiped out all my files and I had like over 150 gigs missing so I looked into it and I found out deleteing ur windowsold helped so I deleted that and now im missing 80 gigs my new windows folder takes up like 18 gigs I think so i know windows 7 takes up memory but 80 gigs worth? I am missing memory how can I get it back I already did a disk clean up and defrag and that really didnt even give me anything new. Is there somthing im missing or can do???
 
Honestly Im not sure what HDD i have I have probably looked it up and forgot about it. Yeah I did the show all hidden files and folder but that still wasnt even 80 gigs I think it was just an extra 2 gigs if that If i remember right. I dont know why it didnt give me a fresh install I clicked custom install and it said it will remove all my old files and programs this is quite frusterating. 80 gigs is alot of memory to not have.
 
It sounds like shadow copy making its backup.

Right click your hard drive and click "Properties". Go to the "Previous Versions" tab and see if there is any listed.

You can disabled it by right clicking "Computer", clicking "Properties", clicking "Advanced System Settings" and going to the "System Protection" tab.
 
If your using the HD spec as a reference for amount of space you're expecting, then you need to read up a bit on what happens when you format the hard drive. There is a difference between non formatted space and formatted space.

If this is not the case, take a snippet of your main HD and post it on here. We can help you and narrow it down from there.
 
If your using the HD spec as a reference for amount of space you're expecting, then you need to read up a bit on what happens when you format the hard drive. There is a difference between non formatted space and formatted space.

If this is not the case, take a snippet of your main HD and post it on here. We can help you and narrow it down from there.


There is no difference between a formatted or unformatted drive. The "difference" you see is the misrepresentation of the volume size by the OS because its (the OS) is using the incorrect suffix to state the size. However, if the OS did infact use the correct suffix, then the volume stated would be correct.

Example:

WD 640GB HDD contains 640,132,575,232 bytes (more then 640GB by 132MB).

Windows misrepresents the total size as 596GB.

GB=1000^3

It should actually state 596GiB.

GiB=1024^3

640GB = 640,000,000,000 bytes

596GiB = 639,950,127,104 bytes

596GB = 596,000,000,000 bytes

596GB =/= (596GiB = 600GB)




Since your using Windows, simply goto "Windows Explorer", right click on the actual drive itself (for example ( C: )) and choose "Properties". The screen that opens up will give you the correct total space in bytes just above the pie chart. You can simply use the first group of number(s) before the comma and add 'GB' to that to see what your actual total drive space is (which would match whats stated on the HDD itself).

Now if your actually "missing" HDD space because of other issues (hidden partition? incorrectly partitioned? system backups?), what the others have stated are things that can help you look into it.
 
on a calculator do this; <drive size> x .932 = <formatted size>

1500 = 1.398 gig
1000 = 932 gig
750 = 699 gig
640 = 596.48 gig
500 = 466 gig
400 = 372.8 gig
320 = 298.24 gig
250 = 233 gig
160 = 149.12 gig
 
on a calculator do this; <drive size> x .932 = <formatted size>

Stating it this way would still make it sound as if there is actual storage space lost when formatting. I think a more correctly termed formula would be:

<decimal size> x .932 = <binary size>

Decimal being 1000^x; KB, MB, GB, TB, etc.

Binary being 1024^x; KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB, etc.
 
Stating it this way would still make it sound as if there is actual storage space lost when formatting. I think a more correctly termed formula would be:

<decimal size> x .932 = <binary size>

Decimal being 1000^x; KB, MB, GB, TB, etc.

Binary being 1024^x; KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB, etc.


Which ever, the answer is still the same...
 
Offtopic guys, pull it back on track please.

Why exactly are they offtopic?

The above poster states that he/she has "lost" 80 GB of HD space in one way or another.

I too read the thread title and immediately thought that he/she has misinterpreted the whole 1024 bits vs 1000 bits in a byte thing that makes it seem like our drives are never the size that's written on the box.
 
whats the size of the hd you have.

and have you turned off system restore to get rid of all the unnecessary restore points?



So I'm having the same problem, let me elaborate through pics and see if this is his problem as well. This was all done on a fresh install of windows 7.


I have a 500g Seagate model "STS3500320AS"


pic1k.png


as you can see the drive reports 375GB free of 465GB. a difference of 90GB.

However when I index the C drive for total used space...

pic2s.png



It reports only 20.6GB space used. in other words, where is the other 69.4GB

This isn't a 1024 vs 1000 issue. I think the OP is in the same boat, hopefully this makes it a bit more clear.
 
Last edited:
It sounds like shadow copy making its backup.

Right click your hard drive and click "Properties". Go to the "Previous Versions" tab and see if there is any listed.

You can disabled it by right clicking "Computer", clicking "Properties", clicking "Advanced System Settings" and going to the "System Protection" tab.



I didn't even see this post, Bravo.


This was my issue. :sn:
 
So I'm having the same problem, let me elaborate through pics and see if this is his problem as well. This was all done on a fresh install of windows 7.


I have a 500g Seagate model "STS3500320AS"


pic1k.png


as you can see the drive reports 375GB free of 465GB. a difference of 90GB.

However when I index the C drive for total used space...

pic2s.png



It reports only 20.6GB space used. in other words, where is the other 69.4GB

This isn't a 1024 vs 1000 issue. I think the OP is in the same boat, hopefully this makes it a bit more clear.
As I said:

It sounds like shadow copy making its backup.

Right click your hard drive and click "Properties". Go to the "Previous Versions" tab and see if there is any listed.

You can disabled it by right clicking "Computer", clicking "Properties", clicking "Advanced System Settings" and going to the "System Protection" tab.
 
Aww, you beat me to it, no problem. Now I just wish the original poster would read my comment. ;)
 
Back