My hard drive is shrinking! 8gb lost & missing!

[mjvgiese]

I just deleted a folder with about 4GB of DVD files in it. When I deleted it, Windows said it was too big for the recycle bin, and asked if I wanted to permanently delete it. I said yes, and the files disapeared, but I didn't gain back the hard drive space. This happened last night with a 4GB DVD image file, also. I've tried emptying the recycle bin, but it is already empty.

I've had this problem in the past on my desktop computer, but after clearing the Norton recycle bin, the space always comes back. But I am now having this problem on my new laptop, and it doesn't have Norton installed, so I don't know what to do. It does have McAfee on it, but I can't find anywhere that McAfee saves files like Norton does.

Is this some sort of problem with Windows? I'm running XP Media Center Edition 2005, SP2.

I'd sure appreciate any suggestions. I can't finish my dvd project until I can get this fixed.
Thanks....

Sorry about the wrong forum, I've already reported this and asked to be moved to the correct one.

[piano632]

Run Checkdisk:

Open My Computer
Right-click on hard drive letter and select Properties
Click the Tools tab
Click Check Now
Put a check in the box that says automatically fix file system errors and start.

[InXess]

this may be due to System Restore. Also check Disk Cleanup wizard. But first run chkdsk as suggested.

[redwudz]

Moved to Computer Forum.

[mjvgiese]

Thank you for moving my post, and sorry I didn't post it in the correct one to begin with.

I ran CheckDisk as suggested, but there was no change, my 8gb of hard drive space didn't come back.

I also went in and turned off System restore, but that only gained me about 1gb. I also tried the Disk Cleanup wizard, but it just told me that I could clear 280,627KB by clearing my Temp Internet files.

Is there anything else that could be causing this? I think I remember hearing something about windows having problems like this when you delete large files, but I don't remember the fix, and I haven't been able to find it on google or here.

[DizConnected]

I like to use CCleaner to get rid of all the junk on my hard drive before I defrag. Has always worked great for me. http://www.ccleaner.com/

[InXess]

Try defrag to refresh/reclaim HDD space.
Check properties for all major folders ( for amount of space used) to see if you have some unusual - too high values. Browse and find out why (mouse over these folders); unhide folders/files look for RECYCLER folder and check it as well.

[mjvgiese]

I tried CCleaner, and it told me I could recover 341MB if it deleted some stuff, mostly the stuff it listed was just temp internet files.

I also defragged, but that didn't do anything. I am still missing that 8gb of space.

Any more ideas????

[bobkart]

Check properties for all major folders ( for amount of space used) to see if you have some unusual - too high values. Browse and find out why (mouse over these folders); unhide folders/files look for RECYCLER folder and check it as well.

[fLYtRap]

I think you must reformat the drive. I had a simillar situation with a small flash drive. Its total capacity is 16mb, however it was showing that it only have 12mb of free space even so that there was nothing on it. I did format the drive and when it was done it showed 16mb of free space.

[fLYtRap]

Check properties for all major folders ( for amount of space used) to see if you have some unusual - too high values. Browse and find out why (mouse over these folders); unhide folders/files look for RECYCLER folder and check it as well.

This is misleading, you won't find anything by doing so. One time I was trying to free up some space on a very small hard drive and I was doing exacly that. I pointed my cursor to "my documents" folder and it showed about 1gb of used space and when I looked inside there was nothing in it exept for a few folders with examples of music and pictures. I did unchecked folder option to show hidden folders to make sure taht I see everything.

[bobkart]

I once fixed a similar problem I had with 12GB of missing space by doing exactly that.

[CrayonEater]

Something also to consider is malware. Software like keyloggers often do store data, at least temporarily. Some of the more advanced keyloggers do screenshots, which can take up an appreciable amount of disk space if they are set to take a lot of them. 8Gb sounds awfully high, even for that, but a poorly-configured logger might be recording much more than it was intended to. Who'sWatchingMe and SpyBot S&D are good anti-keyloggers, ask before trying any others.

Also, look at various software like copying, burning, or editing software and check to be sure that any temp files they may have created were deleted, such as *.NRG files if you use Nero. They are often not stored in the same place as Internet temp file and will not be cleaned by most cleaning programs. Be sure to enable seeing Hidden files from My Computer->Tools->Folder Options->View->Show Hidden Files and Folders.

Failing all else, consider that your drive may be corrupted. As somebody else mentioned, a reformat might be in order, but even that may only be a temporary fix.

[InXess]

This is misleading, you won't find anything by doing so. One time I was trying to free up some space on a very small hard drive and I was doing exacly that. I pointed my cursor to "my documents" folder and it showed about 1gb of used space and when I looked inside there was nothing in it exept for a few folders with examples of music and pictures. I did unchecked folder option to show hidden folders to make sure taht I see everything.

You gave me a good laugh with your post. Thanks. I needed that.

[ntscuser]

I tried CCleaner, and it told me I could recover 341MB if it deleted some stuff, mostly the stuff it listed was just temp internet files.

I also defragged, but that didn't do anything. I am still missing that 8gb of space.

Any more ideas????

Do a search for all files over say 100,000KB and list results by file size. Look for unusually large folder with unrecognised file name. Examine contents and if they're no use to you, shift-delete. Use shift-delete in future to avoid objects being placed in recyle bin.

[lordsmurf]

I have Norton Utilities, so I have to empty the Norton Protected Files before the space is released.

[ntscuser]

I have Norton Utilities, so I have to empty the Norton Protected Files before the space is released.

But as the original poster pointed out, he does not have Norton installed on this particular PC.

[TBoneit]

Are you sure you really have 8Gb lost? This isn't a Microsoft Gb versus hard drive make Gb issue is it?

Microsft reports a 80 Gb drive as around 72Gb. WinXp reports a WD 120Gb as 111 Gb on my system or 119,990,592 Bytes for example. That doesn't mean I've lost 9 Gb though. Just binary vs decimal.

[bobkart]

It's not just Microsoft by the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte

A "computer" gigabyte (2^30 bytes) is about 7% more than a billion bytes (10^9 bytes).

A 120GB drive would seem to have about 8.4GB too little space when measured in GiB ("computer" gigabytes).

[ntscuser]

It's not just Microsoft by the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte

A "computer" gigabyte (2^30 bytes) is about 7% more than a billion bytes (10^9 bytes).

A 120GB drive would seem to have about 8.4GB too little space when measured in GiB ("computer" gigabytes).

But "space remaining" should be the same regardless of how the total drive space is measured.

[bobkart]

But "space remaining" should be the same regardless of how the total drive space is measured.

I'm not sure what you're saying should be the same as "space remaining".

But this does not seem to be the problem according to the original post, where he says he deleted a couple of 4GB files/folders yet the space remaining did not increase by that amount.

I would still recommend starting at the root of the drive and looking at where the space is being used. For each folder with, say, more than 4GB reported as it's size, go into it and confirm that it really has that much stuff in it. You may have to repeat the process with each folder within the outer folder. If all the space reported to be used by the folders on your system is actually accounted for by their contents, then there isn't much you can do except wonder what really happened when you deleted the 4GB files/folders. Only by finding some folder that says it's using more space than the files within it account for can you identify a problem. Unless the problem is that the total reported free space on the disc is less than the difference between the total capacity of the drive and the amount the OS says in in use (by adding the sizes of the files/folders in the drive's root).

Perhaps if we knew:

- the total drive capacity
- the amount of free space reported by the OS
- the amount in use (by adding the sizes of the files/folders in the drive's root)

we could better diagnose the problem.

[handyguy]

Be easier to just get a bigger HD. Also, be sure to restart your computer & see if that changes things.