Missing hd space ????

[littlegohan]

My 120 gb hd has 3 paritions

partion e is 80g, and after formating it , I have 72.7gig (i understand the calculation of size is dffereint for hd manufacutrers)

anyways, I checked that I have 38.9gb free space

so 72.7 -38.9=33.8 (space that is used)

however, if I selected all files and folders in drive E
the total space being used is
28.3


so what happened to that 5 gig?
:frown:

 

[Budman]

i understand the calculation of size is dffereint for hd manufacutrers

I dont think you do fully understand.

Why doesn?t my hard drive have the advertised amount of space?

 

[EeyoreX]

It doesn't sound like he's asking "Why don't I have a full 120GB?" It sounds like he wants to know what is using up 5GB of space that is not being reported by Windows Explorer/My Computer.

It could be hidden files/folders eating up that space. It is also likely the MFT eating up some. If file indexing is enabled, that's some. If you have Norton File Protection enabled for your recycle bin that is more space being used. Bottom line is that it is probably some hidden files or folders.

\Dan

 

[littlegohan]

i already said that i know the advestised space is different
in my first paragraph i already said that i know why my 80gb partition ends up to be 72.7gb


anyways i have selected viewing all hidden folders and files in folder option
and i dont have software like norton file protection

whats mft and file indexing?

 

[EeyoreX]

MFT is the Master File Table, it is created when you use NTFS to format your drives. File indexing is a feature of NTFS that indexes your files for faster searches. You can disable this by right clicking on your drive, click Properties and uncheck the box labled "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching" That may help you get your space back.

\Dan

 

[Hanzou]

how much of a performance gain do you get when enabling file indexing? I have it enabled but am just wondering.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Hanzou
how much of a performance gain do you get when enabling file indexing? I have it enabled but am just wondering.

none at all... all it does is index files for faster file searches... if you don't search for files often, turn it off

 

[beverage]

Whatever the problem, I doubt you're the only one with it.

My main HD reads

advertised - 40 gig
reported size - 37.2 gig
amount reported free - 14 gig
should leave - 23.2 gig used

BUT

amount when all contents of C: selected - 18.3 gig

so I'm missing 4.9 gigs

 

[Jeff7181]

right click on the drive and look at the graph with your free space vs. used space... just selecting files doesn't get em all... there's hidden and system files that will never get selected... your swap file for example...

 

[littlegohan]

but my swap file should be on my c partition, not my e right?

i installed windows to C, and my e partiation is solely for the purpose of storage

 

[tbates757]

Oh no, let's not get into another bits bytes gigs discussion again

 

[xanther]

i would have to say that 80% of the "missing" HDD space comes from the face that your FAT or NTFS table needs space to store its location table of each and every sector of your hdd. in general i would say that a person would lose 5% of the manufactor listed size. i may be off by a few percentages. but yes, thats the bulk of it. hidden files and what not contribute, but nothing will take gigs away from you and hide it.

 

[xanther]

i forgot to leave something in
i am not saying the previous posts were wrong, but if you notice right after you partition and format your hdd in dos prompt, you will see you have lost a significant amount right there.

 

[chocoruacal]

Check your System Restore and Page File settings. Perhaps either of those are active on the partitions.

 

[littlegohan]

Originally posted by: tbates757
Oh no, let's not get into another bits bytes gigs discussion again

this is not a bit/byte discussion

 

[littlegohan]

i would have to say that 80% of the "missing" HDD space comes from the face that your FAT or NTFS table needs space to store its location table of each and every sector of your hdd. in general i would say that a person would lose 5% of the manufactor listed size. i may be off by a few percentages. but yes, thats the bulk of it. hidden files and what not contribute, but nothing will take gigs away from you and hide it.

ok i already said
right after formatting it, the 80gb partion is down to 72.7
i am fine with that

but now i am missing space as i store more files in the drive, is that the space occupied by the file tables?

and yes i know the diffdrent between bits and bytes

 

[NTB]

what kinds/sizes of files are you storing on the 80GB partition? If it's a lot of little bitty stuff, that may be part of your problem. Windows defines something called a cluster size when you format a drive/partition, and it is in these clusters that a file is stored. If a file is larger than a single cluster, it will be spread out, but if it is smaller than the cluster size, it will still take up one entire cluster.

Now, unless you've got a jillion tiny files on there, this won't account for all 5GB of missing space, but it might be part of it. If you do have any folders with a bunch of small files, zip the folder up (which will "concentrate" everything into one long, larger file), then delete the original folder -or move it to another drive - and see if any space is freed up.

Nate

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
right click on the drive and look at the graph with your free space vs. used space... just selecting files doesn't get em all... there's hidden and system files that will never get selected... your swap file for example...

i just selected windows directory and it said 1.12 gigs, then i selected windows and swap and i got 1.87 gigs. so much for that theory.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: NTB
what kinds/sizes of files are you storing on the 80GB partition? If it's a lot of little bitty stuff, that may be part of your problem. Windows defines something called a cluster size when you format a drive/partition, and it is in these clusters that a file is stored. If a file is larger than a single cluster, it will be spread out, but if it is smaller than the cluster size, it will still take up one entire cluster.

Now, unless you've got a jillion tiny files on there, this won't account for all 5GB of missing space, but it might be part of it. If you do have any folders with a bunch of small files, zip the folder up (which will "concentrate" everything into one long, larger file), then delete the original folder -or move it to another drive - and see if any space is freed up.

Nate

windows counts size on disk as well

 

[lobadobadingdong]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181

Originally posted by: Hanzou
how much of a performance gain do you get when enabling file indexing? I have it enabled but am just wondering.

none at all... all it does is index files for faster file searches... if you don't search for files often, turn it off

what are you kidding, I notice at least a 15% difference in performace with indexing on, turn it off, and restart, open explorer, it will take a while for explorer to appear with everything there, then turn it on and restart again, open explorer again and notice your instant speed boost. Maybe it's because I do a lot of office work that I notice this insane difference, if all you do is play games and some occasional school essays, maybe the difference isn't there, i dunno?

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

check the settings for your recycle bin settings. The option in there that lets you choose how much of the drive to allocate to recycle bin files. try playing with this and see how your space changes. Also, do you have drive compression turned on? this can cause all kinds of funky errors.

 

[littlegohan]

Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski
check the settings for your recycle bin settings. The option in there that lets you choose how much of the drive to allocate to recycle bin files. try playing with this and see how your space changes. Also, do you have drive compression turned on? this can cause all kinds of funky errors.

nope i dont have any disk compression thing turned on
anyways
i checked the recycle bin
it was using 10% of each drive and now i reduced it 4%

but i am still missing the 5 gig