hard drive space disappears over time

OpenToSuggestions · 23 Nov 2007 at 01:10

hi. one of my slave hard drives is full (ish) of data, but when i delete something no space is freed up, the formatted space is about 232gb, it says it has 400mb free yet the files only total 205gb.

I usually drag all the files onto another hard drive, format the empty one then put the files back on. This recovery the lost space but transfering 205gb twice is time consuming and I don't have a large spare hard drive to transfer to anyway at the mo.

Any other ways of freeing up wasted hard drive space? any programs to do it?

thanks
EDIT: ooo over 1000 posts

iviv · 23 Nov 2007 at 01:24

http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/visualization/sequoiaview/

This may help. It shows you what is taking up your hard drive space, and where it is. You could try CCleaner which will delete any temp files and other useless junk

Crowze · 23 Nov 2007 at 08:34

Sounds like system restore is chewing up the space, clean it out using the disk cleanup wizard.

OpenToSuggestions · 23 Nov 2007 at 12:03

i deleted 16gb of lost and no space was freed up?! will try the program. dont think theres any system restores on there as its just a storage hard drive (no OS on there)

badbob · 23 Nov 2007 at 12:06

run chkdsk, could have lost fragments (automatically fix..)

Crowze · 23 Nov 2007 at 14:03

mglover070588 said:
i deleted 16gb of lost and no space was freed up?! will try the program. dont think theres any system restores on there as its just a storage hard drive (no OS on there)

Doesn't matter, Windows will automatically enable system restore on all new disks and you have to turn it off manually.

sammie377 · 23 Nov 2007 at 19:12

mglover070588 said:
i deleted 16gb of lost and no space was freed up?! will try the program. dont think theres any system restores on there as its just a storage hard drive (no OS on there)

I found the only way was to do what you did before swap it to another drive then back, somehow something takes the space!!!!!