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.

 

[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.

 

[JayRC]

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