Windows XP AND Video Editing

[kano]

ya so i went out an bought a 160gig hard drive for my computer for digital video editing. everything was going beautifully i could capture using premiere all day long with out dropping any frames, then one day my 18gig hard drive that i was keeping all of my system files and my software and and thing that wasn't digital video took a fat shit. The only thing that was lost was my digital video files, and my software that i had backed up. so with out having another hard drive i had to use my 160 for my system files and my software. But when i went to install windows xp on my 160gig there where already 20gigs of video files on my 160, I installed Windows Xp and magically my computer was telling me that my hard drive have 48gigs of used space. I subtracted my 20 gigs of video files from this and determined that windows xp is taking up 28gigs of valuable space on my 160 which i know is bullshit, do I reformat and reinstall windows xp on a clean hard drive or is there something else i should do?

-Kano

[RabidDog]

are you using ntfs or fat16? this could be slack space or even temporary files. try reboot defrag and scandisk?

[kano]

i'm not using ntfs because i'm not hooked up to the internet so whats the point

[BobK]

i'm not using ntfs because i'm not hooked up to the internet so whats the point

NTFS doesn't have a 4GB limit on file size, so if you doing video and want larger files that would be one point.

What would the point be if you were hooked up to the internet?

[Webster]

Here is another tibit of information. If you are using WindowXP, make sure you have SP1 installed. If you do not have SP1, window will not be able to recognize all 160Gigs on the hard drive.

[kano]

I have sp1 installed and it turns out my hard drive is setup up as ntfs, and its not any back up files

[RabidDog]

some motherboard bios only recognize 137gb ? you might need an updated bios.

[kano]

Um when i right click on my hard drive and click properties i shows my hard drive is 160gigs in size so the fact that my hard drive is larger than 137gigs is not the problem... i have SP1 and its recognizing all 160gigs, the problem is, that when i installed windows xp on this drive magically out of no where 20gigs of used space is unaccounted for

[johns0]

winxp uses file space for system restore,power management,page files,turn off or reduce system restore to magically get back some file space.

[Heavensent]

get into ANY folder :

1 - select "tools" and "folder options"
2 - select the "view" tab
3 - here you must select "show hidden files and folders"
and UNCHECK the "hide protected operating system files"
4 - select "apply to all folders"

now go to your video editing drive (D: ?)
and you will see a folder named "System Volume Information"
right click on it and select "properties"
if the size of this folder is 20 gig than you have found your lost space...
this folder is used when you want to restore a computer to an earlier date.
so its up to you if you want to delete whats inside it.
if your computer is in good shape than dont worry about it and delete it,
you can create a new restore point later.

if you want to delete this folder, you will need to delete all the folders that
are inside it BUT DONT DELETE THE LAST FOLDER.

in the last folder you can delete all the files BUT DONT DELETE "CHANGE.LOG"
you will not be able to delete this file anyway.

now empty the recycle bin.

the next thing you should do is create a new restore point.

i hope this helps

[JaketheSnake]

You must have installed XP with out SP1 built into the installer.

If you install an older version of XP, the installer will only see 137gigs. After installing SP1, you can then see the full 160.

Double check Disk Management to make sure you don't have a 137gig partition and then a bucnh of unused spaced. If you do, you will need to ghost the 160 to a spare drive, and then ghost back again to create one large 160 partition.

Unfortunatley there is no way to update the install routine other than to obtain a new version of XP. So if you crash, prepare to do this again.

[Gazorgan]

NTFS has some issues with 'lost files'.

In Particualr, Norton System Works and Video Editing don't mix. Don't run System works if you are doing video (you can't delete files over 4GB, and they get 'lost').

NTFS can do this on it's own sometimes. Checking your drives for errors, and automatically recovering, will fix any problems with deleteing files over 4 GB's. By default, large files aren't placed in the recycle bin when deleted. However, sometimes they get moved anyway, but don't show up. I routinely have to double check for DVDR ISO's that have gotten lost.

[kano]

Hello Peoples, this is kano and i just thought that I would reply to this contriversal topic that i have created. I tried turning off my system restore and i didn't magically get any space back. I also exposing all of my folders and found my system volume information folder that was suppossed to contain my hard drive space that was unaccounted for, and that folder contained 0 gigs. anyone no what i should do now?

[Tommyknocker]

I use defrag and analyze. It list which files are fragmented and how much space they take up. I found out my internet temp files and Gold Wavre temp files are drive space hogs.

[vcdlover]

Kano,
You can do this method. Go to Folder Options and select View All Files. Right click on each folder and select Properties. Each folder should tell how much space used and open it to see what inside is. Somewhere in one of your folders should have 48 GBs...


vcdlover

[kzPhaze]

Search google for an awesome little program called "spacemonger". It is freeware and gives you a very clear and easy to understand visual snapshot of the size of all files and folders on your system. You will easily be able to see what is taking up your space.

[RabidDog]

give up.. install linux...reformat.. make two or more parts smaller than 80gbs. spacemonger sounds like a good idea.

[kano]

well i googled and downloaded space monger, its a great little program. However, even it says that there 20gigs extra on my hard drive, cause when I add up all the folders i'm still coming up 20gigs short. I think i'm going to do what rabid dog says and just give up.

-kano

[D_Knife]

Have you done what Gazorgan suggested and ran chkdsk??
open a command prompt and type
chkdsk /v /f
you can also run chkdsk d: /v /f or any other drive you want
this will check to see if you have lost clusters - which it is starting to sound like you have

[kano]

Every time i run a disk check my system has to restart for it to begin running a disk check. and at the end it finishes so fast that i can't read what the results were

-kano

[D_Knife]

hmm - that is odd
normally with the /v - verbose it has a pause at the end of the operation
it should wait 10 seconds at least
if you run chkdsk without the /f then it just shows what's wrong

chkdsk /v

this gives full error report but doesn't do anything to fix - it doesn't require a reboot either
perhaps the problem is not a file-structure problem after all

[MachineMan]

You have Norton Antivirus?

I once lost 50+gig on my hard drive once and it turned out that my Norton Antivirus was protecting files that I had deleted but they weren't showning up in my folders. I went into Norton's Protected/Recycle bin and deleted them and then disabled file protection for that drive.

[kano]

well i'm confident in my addition skills and i know when i add up all of the folders it doesn't equal the amount of space my computer says its using, and i wouldn't really care to much if it was a couple megabytes but 20gigs is a nice size chunk of my 160gig hard drive my only hypothesis is that my computer is giving me an incorrect estimate of used space. and no i am not running norton anti virus i hate that program

[lordsmurf]

i'm not using ntfs because i'm not hooked up to the internet so whats the point

That doesn't make any sense. NTFS has nothing to do with the Internet.

[kano]

ya well i was wrong so please quit quoting that post and help me get my 20gigs back

[FulciLives]

ya well i was wrong so please quit quoting that post and help me get my 20gigs back

When you do a lot of capturing you should have 2 physical hard drives ANYWAYS so stop complaining and get another small HDD for your system drive and reformat the 160GB and use it as your second HDD for capture and conversion etc.

You can get an 80GB drive pretty cheap these days. Even a 60GB will probably do for your main system drive.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
One more thought. A 160GB drive will not be 160GB when formated. For instance my second HDD is an 80GB drive but formated (WinXP NTFS) it is only 76.3GB in size. So maybe you really aren't missing space but it's just the normal format thing.

[lordsmurf]

It's probably a bad partition. Look into partition magic to re-partition on the fly.

[You_Are_Alive]

On a 160GB drive formatted to NTFS (4K cluster), you will lose (so to speak) 11.2GB. So at least now you know, Kano. You are really only missing 9.8GB, maybe. (Based on your parameters) And its a waste trying to add up all the folders manually, thats just nuts. Forget it, if winxp reports the right size, then its right. The other software you downloaded said the same thing too.

[kano]

this is my last post on this subject because i have decided that my only solution is to quit complaining and buy a new 80gig drive or something and reformat everything and wipe my drives to zero, the fact is that i need to drives for digital video editing. but for the record my computer says that its only a 150gig drive or something of the sort where its measured in actual bytes but its says the capacity is 163gigs and i'm well aware that by default windows is taking away a certain amount of gigs and i'm totally fine with that, the problem is that it says my used space is up to 50gigs and everything only adds up to 30gigs so 20 gigs is unaccounted for and i have no idea why this is taking place.

-kano

[lordsmurf]

Could be protected files (norton trashcan) or faulty recycle bin.