WinDirStat showing 49GB "Unknown" Space?

[marketsons1985]

Running a space check on a computer of mine, I noticed a great deal of space that has gone "missing." I ran WinDirStat and only found about 100GB total showing (Free/Used) on a 160GB Hard drive. Then I asked for WinDirStat to show everything, and 48.7 GB is showing as "unknown"

Anyone have any idea what this could be? I've got:

48.7 GB Unknown
29.2 GB Free
The rest is Used. I can account for all the used space, but none of the unknown space.

WTF?? Why is there so much space in limbo? How can I get it back easily?

EDIT: Under Computer Management --> Disk Management all 143.48 GB show up under one partition.

 

[Slugbait]

I'm guessing that's where your system image is located. You probably don't really want to blow that away...

 

[mfenn]

Running a space check on a computer of mine, I noticed a great deal of space that has gone "missing." I ran WinDirStat and only found about 100GB total showing (Free/Used) on a 160GB Hard drive. Then I asked for WinDirStat to show everything, and 48.7 GB is showing as "unknown"

Anyone have any idea what this could be? I've got:

48.7 GB Unknown
29.2 GB Free
The rest is Used. I can account for all the used space, but none of the unknown space.

WTF?? Why is there so much space in limbo? How can I get it back easily?

EDIT: Under Computer Management --> Disk Management all 143.48 GB show up under one partition.

If you're running Vista or 7, make sure to run WinDirStat as Administrator.

They way WinDirStat works is that the it takes the used space as reported by the operating system and subtracts all the space that it can "account for" by looking at file sizes. The remainder is reported as "Unknown". If you don't run as Administrator, then any files that WinDirStat is denied access to will not have their sizes counted. This results in a much larger "Unknown" value.

 

[marketsons1985]

Yeah...it looks as though this is the restore and backup file provided by lenovo. I'm going to back it up on my external then get rid of this file to make the space useable.

 

[Blain]

Check to see if your \recycler folder is holding a lot of crap.
You might need to enable viewing Windows system files.

 

[Farstanley]

mfenn
I got the same problem with 33GB unknown, temp dir empty deleted restore points and stuff but 33 GB still unkown, and want to try your solution but I don't know how to run a program as administrator on vista can you let me know please?
The only other way to get this space back is to reinstall

 

[lxskllr]

Right click the shortcut, and pick Run as administrator from the context menu.

 

[mfenn]

Right click the shortcut, and pick Run as administrator from the context menu.

:thumbsup:

 

[Fallingwater]

First thing I always do in any new computer I get is to wipe the recovery partition. I might leave it if all it contained was a plain copy of Windows ready to run, but no, it invariably contains all sorts of preinstalled crap. I prefer to install a fresh system whenever the need arises - it's quicker and often easier than restoring and then removing all the crapware by hand.

 

[Farstanley]

It just so happens that this computer has been recently reinstalled and had no loss of disk space as mentioned above and my recent post was regarding it's predecessor but..
This morning I downloaded and installed the WinHelp32 package for legacy wordprocessors and a snap in thingy they insisted accompanied the download from microsoft and afterward noticed a sudden drop from 197 GB disk space to 193 GB and ran WinDirStat.
Suddenly I have 4.2 GB showing as unknown.
I have screen shots of the before and after and will run WinDirStat daily after this but the finger of blame has been firmly pointed at microsoft and I would like to tell them I have caught them at it but their web sites are colossal endless and never ever to the point
We all know they won't admit to it but anybody know the best way of bringing this to their attention?
In the mean time it looks like frequent reinstalls to avoid losing my disk space

 

[Modelworks]

A better way to see what is going on is to use the command line.
At a prompt type DISKPART

You will get another prompt, type
LIST DISK

type , putting the disk number you want information for
SELECT DISK 0

Next type
DETAIL DISK

That will show all the information about drive size, partitions, manufacturer, etc

To exit diskpart just close the window or type
EXIT

For example my drive shows

DISKPART> detail disk

Hitachi HDE721010SLA330 ATA Device
Disk ID: 2D20A05B
Type   : ATA
Status : Online
Path   : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1F02)#ATA(C00T00L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only  : No
Boot Disk  : Yes
Pagefile Disk  : Yes
Hibernation File Disk  : No
Crashdump Disk  : Yes
Clustered Disk  : No

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 3         System Rese  NTFS   Partition    100 MB  Healthy    System
  Volume 4     C                NTFS   Partition    294 GB  Healthy    Boot
  Volume 5     E   650GB        NTFS   Partition    637 GB  Healthy

If you want even more information you can type, putting the number for the volume you want info for
SELECT VOLUME 4

Then
DETAIL VOLUME

DISKPART> detail volume

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
* Disk 0    Online          931 GB      0 B

Read-only              : No
Hidden                 : No
No Default Drive Letter: No
Shadow Copy            : No
Offline                : No
BitLocker Encrypted    : No
Installable            : Yes

Volume Capacity        :  294 GB
Volume Free Space      :  215 GB

 

[RebateMonger]

A better way to see what is going on is to use the command line.
At a prompt type DISKPART

While there's good information there, it doesn't show the space used for shadowcopies.

The command-line command, "VSSAdmin list shadowstorage" will show the Shadowcopy space used on all disks in the system.

For example, my Win7 boot disk, a 320 GB WD SATA disk:

Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (C: )\\?\Volume{ac7933ee-2835-11df-9a3c-806e6f6e6963}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume: (C: ) \\?\Volume{ac7933ee-2835-11df-9a3c-806e6f6e6963}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 1.529 GB (0&#37
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 1.764 GB (0%)
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 8.748 GB (2%)

And my E: disk, a 1 TB Hitachi SATA disk:

Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (E: ) \\?\Volume{52a8df88-8e18-11df-a43c-806e6f6e6963}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume: (E: ) \\?\Volume{52a8df88-8e18-11df-a43c-806e6f6e69
63}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 535.781 MB (0%)
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 3.438 GB (0%)
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 149.044 GB (16%)

 

[Farstanley]

Today I installed WordPerfect Office X3 and the "unknown" in WinDirStat increased from 4.2 to 7.6GB. The installed program is only 706MB on disk so why would a shadow copy volume want 3.4GB?

 

[Farstanley]

I just tried RebateMonger's suggestion 'VSSAdmin list shadowstorage' at a command prompt and got 'Error:You don't have the correct permissions to run this command. Please run this utility from a window that has has elevated administrator privileges' can somebody let me know how to do that please?

 

[tcsenter]

Right click on Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator.