8 gigabytes are missing from my computer... please help me find them!

[clicknext]

This is a rather strange problem... when I go to the properties of one of my partitions, it says there are 49GB used, 5GB free. When I go into the partition and highlight everything, it says 41GB are used. All hidden and system files are shown, and file recovery programs are not present. System restore is disabled as well.

Where could my space have gone?

 

[obeseotron]

If system restore is off the only idea i have is that maybe its a multiuser computer and there are files inside someone else's folder in documents and settings, making them inaccessible to you, but that's a long shot.

 

[Sonix7]

Well I think it could be files in recycle bin or, and moreover possible: the slack, the wasted space generated by the cluster size, if it is too big, 32Kb or 64Kb and your average file size is smaller then you have slack space .

 

[clicknext]

The recycle bin is completely empty, and I emptied out any extra things in E:\RECYCLER\ too. Does windows not include the space wasted by slack in its file sizes?

 

[bacillus]

what about your temporary internet files?
also if you have hibernation enabled then it'll use as much ram as you have.

 

[clicknext]

Temporary files and internet files are cleared. It's a fairly new install of windows anyway. The partition that's missing space isn't the windows partition, by the way.

 

[Cassius105]

I had this problem a long time ago

i ran the disk defragmentor to fix it

defraging makes the system re-evaluate the disk size

 

[clicknext]

sigh, I ran the defragment, as well as a full chkdsk and the problem still remains.

Any other way? I guess next thing I'll try is get a copy of knoppix and look what it has to say.

 

[Matthias99]

Norton Protected Recycle Bin? Seen that one a few times... I don't know where it puts those files, but Windows can't see them.

 

[clicknext]

ah geez... that would not be good... I sure hope I won't have to install that Norton crap on my computer again just to try to get rid of it...

 

[sharq]

Seen a similar problem, but that machine had been compromised and was being used as an ftp dump site. Other than that, space taken up by another account or swap space are they only 2 things that come to mind.

 

[Mday]

sounds like slack to me. check how much space files are actually using, not just the size of all the files combined.

 

[clicknext]

Originally posted by: Mday
sounds like slack to me. check how much space files are actually using, not just the size of all the files combined.

Sorry, but how do you check how much space files are actually using?

Do you mean this:

Size: 30.2 GB (32,477,146,002 bytes)
Size on Disk: 30.2 GB (32,492,818,432 bytes)

 

[DusterAZ]

Try this program, it will tell you exactly how much space is being wasted due to slack.

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptslack.asp

 

[clicknext]

40 billion bytes of space used. Only 15 million bytes of slack space in 8000 files. It's quite little, but not unexpected because most of the files on that drive are fairly big. It contains my MP3 collection and all my captured/rendered videos and images.

So not slack space... I think I'll go get an antivirus (not norton this time) and scan just for the sake of trying anything I can think of...