Missing Harddrive Space

[trulyshyazn]

I recently purchased a 200gig western digital (the $22 dollar steal), and having some problems with missing harddrive space. My computer recognizes the harddrive as a 200gig (186gb) harddrive. I have 105 gigs of data on it (selected all the folders and data in hd and went to "properties" ...shows up as 105gigs of data), but when i click the actual drive and select "properties" it shows my 200gig harddrive's used space is 173gigs, with only 12gigs of free space left. Anyone know where the 68gigs went? Anyone have the same problem?

btw. running windows xp, only have one other hd (maxtor 80 gig connected on a separate cable). the 200gig is connected to the ata card.

thanks in advance

 

[1966]

Why doesn?t my hard drive have the advertised amount of space?



Anandtech FAQ's read em,love em.

 

[nowayout99]

Or read his question?

He acknowledged it was 186GB actual space.

How much HD space is allotted to XP's System Restore? That can eat up a lot of hidden space.

 

[bacillus]

system restore & norton protected files are well known for hogging hdd space!

 

[bacillus]

btw welcome to the forums trulyshyazn.

 

[trulyshyazn]

thanks guys, it's fixed.
used norton disk doctor and after it scanned 'n fixed stuff, i could see my remaining 68 gigs

 

[Gunbuster]

Using FAT32 I bet, You have just had a taste of how FAT tends to self destruct on large drives, if you value the data switch to NTFS

 

[Anubis]

are you useing Norton 2003 or 2004? if you are turn off "Norton Protected Recycle bin" it just saves things you delete for X ammount of days or untill they are over written. its annoying happened to em also and i freeked.

also check your temp files coudl be in there. just clean that up

also if you are useing FAT 32 you need to switch to NTFS because that coudl do it also

 

[IncredibleHutch]

Just FYI... If you delete items on an external drive and they remain in the recycle bin during a reinstallation of the OS... I've found that those deleted items take up space on the drive but won't be recognized in the recycle bin. Only way to fix that I know of is to move all files you can see/want to keep to another disk and format that drive and then move files back. Anyone have any other knowledge on this one.

Edit: Actually I guess the drive doesn't have to be external... just a drive that's not the system partition.