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HELP, my already tiny hard drive is loosing gigs!!

R

RPS

Member
So my work laptop is an old Toshiba Tecra 8100. It has a 5.5gig hard drive to start. I just reformated it and it now has 2.5 gigs of free space. Win XP Pro and all the patches and SP2 is just over a gig. Basic program files and stuff are about 200mb. So i did the math on all the folders that are on C: and i have concluded that roughly a gig of space has just vanished!!!

So i talked to a tech savy friend of mine and he told me the hard drive may be failing and a sector may be corrupt or something along those lines. I reformated it first with the NFTS (Quick) method and there was about 1.5 gigs missing. I reformated again with FAT32 and now there is 1 gig missing.

My friend told me to get a diagnostics tool from the manufacturer... and Toshiba does not provide one for my version of laptop. He then told me to post on these forums and see if anyone has a solution or advice to my problem.

I estimate that after i install the virus scanner/firewall/MS Office Pro/Messengers/My files i will only have a hundred or so MB of free hard drive space. Which is nuts!

So does anyone have advice to what i should do. I am not gonna continue to install APPS untill i exhaust all efforts to somehow reclaim my lost gig.

Please help ASAP
Alex
 
who is the manufacturer of the hard drive in your laptop? you can try downloading the manufacturers diagnostic tool, create a floppy and boot off it and run the tests on the drive. if you go into the control panel - system - hardware - device manager and look under "DISK DRIVES" it should show you the make and model of your hard drive.. post it on here..
 
Do things like recycling bin and system restore reduce that figure? That's first thing I would think...
 
What is Swapfile size and how do i check it?

The hard drive is a Fujitsu MHK2060AT

I will try to find the diagnostics tool now but i have nbever put anything on floppy and booted from it and run it. It sounds simple enough but i may run into trouble...
 
Originally posted by: RPS
What is Swapfile size and how do i check it?
Click to expand...

Swap file or Virtual Memory in WinXP can be found by doing -

Righ Click My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Performance:Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory > Change.

Select HD in list and specify Min and Max or Auto.
 
Wow u guys are quick. I been so busy at work in a meeting i have not had time to check for the diag tool. Thanks alot. I am actually getting off right now and cannot do the diag till tomorow at 8am. I will keep you posted on what success i have.

Thank you all for your help.
 
OK i need help to do this.

First I followed Baked's instructions and found out that virtual memory #s

Its Set to 'Custom Size'
Initial size 768mb
Maximum size 1536mb

Then the total paging file size for all drives
Min allowed 2mb
Recommended 766mb
Currently Allocated 766mb

Ok so i also downloaded that diagnostics tool. The PDF that came with it said 2 things i did not like. Firstly i need to boot into DOS to run this. I do not know how to boot into DOS in Win XP.

Secondly it said that after the diagnostics is finished it will give me an error code and i then have to call this # so that they can tell me what the error code is all about.


Also i was looking on that website with the utilities for my HD
http://www.fcpa.com/support/ha...oftware_utilities.html
and there is this program called Fujitsu Erase Utility.... the description of it is...

This procedure performs a pseudo-formatting to the drive. It erases all of your previous data and reinitializes it to "00" pattern. By performing this task, you will be able to erase the whole user area including your Master Boot Record, Partition Table, FAT (File Allocation Table), and all the files and data it refers to. Use this program if you want to be sure your drive is clean.

So... do you guys think it is worth it for me to run that program... like do u think that it may reclaim the lost gig of hard drive space?

Also how do i boot into DOS?

Also based on the #s about my virtual memory i wrote at the start of this post... is anything wrong with it?

Alex
 
Just talked to Fujistsu support and they said i need to get my hands on a boot disk. I think there is still a Win 98 computer running here in the office. I will try to make one with it.


Then they said i should run that diagnostics utility. Then i can do that low level formating.

Why the hell does Win XP with all its bells and wistles have no capacity to make boot disks!??!?!?! What if Win 98/95 never existed. What there would be no boot disks? And the world would colapse onto itself?!?!

 
XP CAN make a boot disk!

Place a floppy in the floppy drive. Right click the floppy drive and click format.
Select "Create an MS-DOS startup disk".
Click "Start".
 
Strange.... i thought Win XP never had the ability. I even remember once i had to also find a Win 98 to make boot disk just for an XP comp. Is this something they added or am i just blind? Anyways i just found a Win 98 comp. Connected it through all the dust surrounding it and made the boot disk.
 
Originally posted by: RPS
Strange.... i thought Win XP never had the ability. I even remember once i had to also find a Win 98 to make boot disk just for an XP comp. Is this something they added or am i just blind?
Click to expand...

It's always been there.
 
Diagnostic mode came back with nothing. My hard drive is just 1 gig short. So sad 🙁 I even downloaded the wipe tool which apparently reset the whole drive to zeros. And i reformated it again. I guess its just a corupt hard drive.

If one part goes corrupt, does it mean that the rest of the hard drive may just fail at any time? Or does one part going bad not effect the whole thing?

Alex
 
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