Where is my storage space gone?

[xj0hnx]

So one of my 1TB drives that houses system, and movie backups is giving me some odd numbers when looking at used vs free space. The drive has six folders on it, and Windows reports it as having 77.8GB free of 931GB, but when I select all the folders and look at properties it shows only 494GB, and when I take the size of each folder individually and add them up it comes to 658GB. When I add any combination of the six folders I get the 494GB. I have "Show Hidden files, folders, and drives" selected. What is going on here? Any ideas?

 

[Smoblikat]

So one of my 1TB drives that houses system, and movie backups is giving me some odd numbers when looking at used vs free space. The drive has six folders on it, and Windows reports it as having 77.8GB free of 931GB, but when I select all the folders and look at properties it shows only 494GB, and when I take the size of each folder individually and add them up it comes to 658GB. When I add any combination of the six folders I get the 494GB. I have "Show Hidden files, folders, and drives" selected. What is going on here? Any ideas?

I have a similar problem, yet its opposite lol

My C drive has 16gb usage, 108gb free of 119gb. Riddle me that, I get a few free gigs from somewhere. Almost makes me want to fill up the drive to see what happens.

 

[xj0hnx]

I have a similar problem, yet its opposite lol

My C drive has 16gb usage, 108gb free of 119gb. Riddle me that, I get a few free gigs from somewhere. Almost makes me want to fill up the drive to see what happens.

Odd, wish I had that problem Trade ya?

 

[postmortemIA]

recycle bin, system restore, page + hibernation file, diff between file size and space occupied on the disk.

either way, it is bit naive to try to add up files this way. Get WinDirStat FOSS software to see where most of your files are at.

 

[xj0hnx]

recycle bin, system restore, page + hibernation file, diff between file size and space occupied on the disk.

either way, it is bit naive to try to add up files this way. Get WinDirStat FOSS software to see where most of your files are at.

Recycle Bin is empty (ok, there's a 129 Byte Desktop.ini file in there), Hibernation is turned off, as well as Page File. WinDirStat reports used space at 494.7GB. However, in the Options drop down, if I select "Unknown" it shows a huge yellow block of space that is 359GB. When I look at it in "Computer Management > Storage > Disk 2 it shows 931.51 GB NTFS Healthy. I thought it may be from my Virtual Machines, but they are configured on the D drive.

Any ideas?

 

[hhhd1]

ntfs compression mess up total size calculation, and windows might have compressed some old system files automatically.

Not sure about that though.

 

[xj0hnx]

ntfs compression mess up total size calculation, and windows might have compressed some old system files automatically.

Not sure about that though.

Don't know where they would have come from though, I formatted this drive when I put it in and all the files I have put on there I have never done any archiving, or compression.

 

[Eeqmcsq]

Have you done a file system check? I have a vague memory of a similar issue where the used capacity of a drive was way more than it should be, and a file system check cleared that up.

 

[KingFatty]

Could it be the slack space?

Like, you'll see a "size" category and a "size on disk" if you do properties on a file.

If you have one file, there might be some wasted slack space for that file where you'll see the size on disk is bigger than the size of the file.

But if you have millions of files, each of those may have some wasted slack space that adds up. Also, different file systems may result in different slack space.

So was it that? Is the size on disk taking up more space than the size, and that accounts for the missing difference?

 

[Elixer]

If you do a chkdsk /x drive_letter on the drive, and it comes back all OK, then it seems that there is something hidden on your drive.
Do you or anyone with access to that drive use any encryption software like True Crypt ?

If not, then, there is a virus that almost does this, but that makes a hidden partition.

I would get a linux boot CD/DVD/USB stick, and boot from that, then check out the drive to see what that shows.

 

[Phynaz]

VSS shadow copies. Turn off system restore and it should all come back.

 

[dagamer34]

I wish Windows would ask you during setup to automatically store all of your documents, pictures, music, video etc on an external drive for those of us with desktop computers because the only thing I want on the C drive is Windows and programs. I want to be able to nuke my install wtihout having to worry about my data.

 

[KingFatty]

I wish Windows would ask you during setup to automatically store all of your documents, pictures, music, video etc on an external drive for those of us with desktop computers because the only thing I want on the C drive is Windows and programs. I want to be able to nuke my install wtihout having to worry about my data.

this is what I'm doing now, because my C: drive is an SSD and my documents/pics/etc. are on a separate hard drive. So I can nuke the C: drive with impunity and not affect the valuable files. But I keep the hard drive internally inside my computer, so both drives are active. I backup the valuable files to 2 other external hard drives just to have redundant copies.

 

[corkyg]

You could be seeing the MFT Reserved Zone. Nothing in it, but it is walled off from the user - part of NTFS overhead. The algorithm makes it baigger when you have lots of free space.

https://www.google.com/search?sourc...&rlz=1T4GGLG_enUS316US316&q=MFT+Reserved+Zone

 

[xj0hnx]

VSS shadow copies. Turn off system restore and it should all come back.

System restore isn't on for that disc, and it is only set to use 4GB.

Could it be the slack space?

Like, you'll see a "size" category and a "size on disk" if you do properties on a file.

Seems too much to be that.

If you do a chkdsk /x drive_letter on the drive, and it comes back all OK, then it seems that there is something hidden on your drive.
Do you or anyone with access to that drive use any encryption software like True Crypt ?

Set to do a check disk on next reboot. I used Hide Folder, but have reinstalled Windows and didn't reinstall it. The only thing I can think of is a backup I made a while back with Acronis, but I think I saved it on another disc, 98% sure.

 

[xj0hnx]

So any other ideas come to mind?