Missing space

[The Sauce]

What is the easiest way to analyze a HDD to figure out what is eating up space? I have a 1TB HDD that is reporting 850GB used, but in windows explorer I can only find about 250GB by looking through the directories. Any ideas? Obviously something is hiding a huge chunk of data.

 

[UsandThem]

What OS are you using? If you upgraded to Windows 10, it creates a Windows.old folder for your old OS.

You can go into the control panel, click on free up disk space, and check 'clean up system files'. It could free up a large chunk of space by deleting the Windows.old folder and Windows update files.

 

[daveybrat]

What OS are you using? If you upgraded to Windows 10, it creates a Windows.old folder for your old OS.

You can go into the control panel, click on free up disk space, and check 'clean up system files'. It could free up a large chunk of space by deleting the Windows.old folder and Windows update files.

That won't account for almost 600GB of used space. Use this program to find the culprit:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/spacesniffer.html

Also, are you using Norton 360 by chance?

 

[UsandThem]

That won't account for almost 600GB of used space. Use this program to find the culprit:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/spacesniffer.html

Also, are you using Norton 360 by chance?

True. It was just a starting point for him. Either there are hidden files/folders, the disk has marked sectors as bad, or there is unallocated space.

 

[PliotronX]

Shadow copies can use 186GB (20% of 931GB) by default. Check out 'vssadmin list shadows' from a command prompt. These are normally stored in the system volume information folder of an NTFS volume and will only show as 0 bytes used unless you take ownership of the folder.

 

[Mike64]

Try Treesize Free (ETA: and when you use it, run it "as administrator").

 

[The Sauce]

Thanks guys. Trying all of these out. I am running Win 7. I am unable to upgrade to Win 10.

 

[Elixer]

Thanks guys. Trying all of these out. I am running Win 7. I am unable to upgrade to Win 10.

Why can't you upgrade?