Help I've lost 15 gb :(

aakerman

Senior member
Jul 22, 2002
436
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0
I have my harddrive in three partitions... the second one, containing movies and music, occupies 29.3 out of 31.4 gb, according to windows (right click -> properties). But if I highlight everything on the drive, and then right click -> properties, it comes out to 14.6 gb.

So 14.7gb is missing somehow - how do I reclaim them? I've had this problem before, but back then,
it was the special recycle bin of norton antivirus, that held 15gb of deleted data. But I don't have norton on this machine - I don't have any AV software at all.
My recycle bin is set at 5%, so that can't be the problem.

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.. using windows 2003 btw.
 

Mark R

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
8,513
16
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If the partition is formatted in FAT, then this is may be 'slack space' - each file is allocated space on the disk in 'clusters', however in FAT the clusters can be up to 64 kB in size (so a 1 byte file needs 64 kB, and a 64.1 kB file needs 128 kB).

An alternative is that there are hidden files/folders e.g. system restore points, directory thumbnails, etc. which are taking up the space - enable viewing of hidden files and system files in explorer and try again.
 

aakerman

Senior member
Jul 22, 2002
436
0
0
It's NTFS..

Scrap -> I'm not missing data... but I need those 15gb to store more files on :/

edit: ARGH wtf is wrong with anandtech today.. I get this "JRun Connector Protocol Error." nine out of ten times..
 

aakerman

Senior member
Jul 22, 2002
436
0
0
It's NTFS..

Scrap -> I'm not missing data... but I need those 15gb to store more files on :/

edit: ARGH wtf is wrong with anandtech today.. I get this "JRun Connector Protocol Error." nine out of ten times..