Problem with hard drive freespace

[JayRC]

I have a 250GB hard drive (reported by windows as 225GB) which has been partitioned to have a seperate 6GB "recovery" partition (this was done by the manufacturer). Not so long ago I had to recover the system as I was having some major problems (but I backed up "My Documents" to another drive).

I lost all of my installed programs, but to cut a long story short, I have 75GB of files on the drive (which should leave me around 150GB free space), however my drive is reporting that I have about 40GB left. I hav etried scandisk and other variants, but these have got me nowhere. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

 

[rpstewart]

Chances are there are a pile of hidden files somewhere. There are a lot of tools available for showing what is using space where, I use Disk Space Explorer but Tree Size Pro etc do the same job.

Try running one of those, most are shareware/freeware, and see what it's saying. It may be that there is a lot of stuff in the "System Volume Information" folder which is usually down to multiple system restore points being stored.

EDIT: Before you go to that bother, have a check in Disk Management and make sure that the disk hasn't been repartitioned stupidly as part of the restore. Pre SP1 versions of XP could only support 128Gb partitions so you may have a load of unallocated space on the disk (128Gb - 75gb of files = 40Gb free possibly)

 

[JayRC]

I have already checked disk management and it also reports only 40GB of free space left, and it hasnt disappeared into another partition, and I am running SP2.

Basically to clarify the situation: If i right click on "Drive C" in My Computer, it will show the pie chart and 40GB of space, but if I double click Drive C - then highlight all of the folders - right click then click properties, the total disk space of all selected files comes to just over 75GB, so would the "Hidden Files" not be detected by selecting all folders and viewing properties (even though "show hidden files and folders" has been selected).

Kind regards.

 

[Uhtred]

did you have norton system tools installed before the reinstall? try going to windows explorer view/folder options/ and tick to view hidden system files and hidden files.

 

[JayRC]

I've already ticked to view the hidden files, this made no difference. Yes I did have norton installed prior to re-installing....