[napolionii]

I'm using Vista on a Lenovo notebook - full details below

I get the following irreconcilable results regarding disk space on the sole drive.

System Information gives disk size 111.79 GB, with partitions of 4.50 GB and 107.28 GB

'Properties' of C: indicates used space 100 GB, free space 6.31 GB; this is confirmed using Diskeeper, which indicates Capacity 107GB, Free Space 6,608 MB.

However, also using 'properties', and adding the space occupied by the various directories on C: I get a total of about 50 GB

This is confirmed by Disktective which indicates a total size of C:\ 52,050,053,120 and free disk space 007,022,641,152 bytes

Thus, about 50 GB of disk space is occupied by something unidentifiable.

I've checked the Volume Shadow Copy - it's less than 2 GB. I've deleted all the temporary files, and the recycle bin.

I have run Chkdsk and get 'This volume is clean'.

I have run the Hitachi Fitness test; it indicates no problems.

Any suggestions as to what the mysterious 50GB may contain, and how I could get rid of it would be very welcome.


Details from System Information:

System Information report written at: 05/11/09 16:18:02
System Name: NOTEBOOKPC
[System Summary]

Item Value
OS Name Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Business
Version 6.0.6001 Service Pack 1 Build 6001
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name NOTEBOOKPC
System Manufacturer LENOVO
System Model 0769B2G
System Type X86-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7300 @ 2.00GHz, 2001 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date LENOVO 68ET18WW, 18/04/2007
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United Kingdom
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.0.6001.18000"
Time Zone W. Europe Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 3.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 3.00 GB
Available Physical Memory 1.33 GB
Total Virtual Memory 6.19 GB
Available Virtual Memory 4.51 GB
Page File Space 3.29 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys


Item Value
Description Disk drive
Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)
Model HITACHI HTS541612J9SA00
Bytes/Sector 512
Media Loaded Yes
Media Type Fixed hard disk
Partitions 2
SCSI Bus 0
SCSI Logical Unit 0
SCSI Port 1
SCSI Target ID 0
Sectors/Track 63
Size 111.79 GB (120,031,511,040 bytes)
Total Cylinders 14,593
Total Sectors 234,436,545
Total Tracks 3,721,215
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition Disk #0, Partition #0
Partition Size 4.50 GB (4,836,032,512 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes
Partition Disk #0, Partition #1
Partition Size 107.28 GB (115,195,510,784 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 4,837,081,088 bytes

[hulkinator]

A lot of that could be consumed by restore points and the contents of the Recycle Bin.

If you right-click the Recycle Bin and click 'Properties' you can control its maximum size.

This page has instructions for controlling the amount of disk space used by system restore. Use it only if you are comfortable with the command line.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...sage-in-vista/

Lastly, you might not have selected all folders. I'm not sure if you had viewing of hidden folders enabled.

[aka Brett]

Originally Posted by hulkinator

A lot of that could be consumed by restore points and the contents of the Recycle Bin.

If you right-click the Recycle Bin and click 'Properties' you can control its maximum size.

This page has instructions for controlling the amount of disk space used by system restore. Use it only if you are comfortable with the command line.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...sage-in-vista/

Lastly, you might not have selected all folders. I'm not sure if you had viewing of hidden folders enabled.

Vista restore points will chew your space up fast..indeed

[baladio]

With System Restore, you can also choose to delete all but the most recent restore point, pretty easily. If all else fails, maybe that 50 GB of space is damaged, and not readable. I think it's possible for an OS to report less space if some is damaged; I've encountered this on a floppy disk. Either damaged or containing errors that need to be fixed.

[chrome57]

Partition Disk #0, Partition #0
Partition Size 4.50 GB (4,836,032,512 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes
Partition Disk #0, Partition #1
Partition Size 107.28 GB (115,195,510,784 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 4,837,081,088 bytes
Tells me that you have two partitions on that disk,# 0 of 4.50 GB (4,836,032,512 bytes)
and #1 of 107.28 GB (115,195,510,784 bytes)
Using the Vista logical drive manager you will be able to delete the #0 partition and extend the remaining one to the maximum available. Most disk tools or boot cd should have tools that will do the same

[hulkinator]

Also note that used space will always be greater than the size of the files. IIRC NTFS uses 4 KB sectors, meaning a 2-byte file will consume 4 KB of the disk because you can only put one file on a sector. So, if you have 200,000 10-byte files on your HDD, the size of the files will be 2 MB, but they will take up 800 MB on disk. This certainly doesn't account for your 50 GB differential, but keep that in mind.

[napolionii]

Thanks for these suggestions regarding my missing 50gb.

I've reduced the Recycle bin from 7.5 to 5 gb. vssadmin list shadowstorage shows less than 2 gb, which I guess I ought not reduce. Chkdsk found no errors.

Chkdsk records about 180,000 files. That's an average size of about 250kb. I don't know what the total overhead in diskspace for this many individual files would be, but it can hardly be 50gb?

I was first alerted to the problem by Diskeeper, which said that I had 107mb, but warned me that I had very little space left. Even before defragmenting the chart showed several bands of pure blue (i.e. already defragmented) which I thought a little odd.

The fact that Diskeeper and other programs record 100+gb suggests to me that the disk is not physically corrupt, and I thought that problem would be picked up by Chkdsk. Are there any other ways of checking the condition of the disk?

I'd like to get to the bottom of the problem, partly because I'd welcome the extra space, and partly because I fear it may be the result of a virus that maybe is having continuing detrimental effects, so any further suggestions would be very welcome.

[napolionii]

I have to apologise for bothering you all. I've now discovered that Lenovo (including IBM Thinkpad) include in some/all their computers a backup ('Rescue and Recovery') utility that (evidently by default) allocates itself the necessary space on the hard disk. Furthermore, it seems to be set to start operating by default. The backup files are visible only on the utility, and on my computer they conveniently added up to just over 50gb.

Incidentally, I also discovered that the Lenovo Forums are peppered with users complaining that they have lost numerous gigabytes of space on their disks!

Thanks once again for the helpful suggestions.

[IMiteBable2help]

I was going to suggest that. It does sound like you have a "recovery" partition on that drive.

hulkinator also had a good point. You really want to look at the "size on disk" of all your files, not the total of the file sizes. The minumum amount of space a file can take up on your drive will be equal to your sector size, thus a 1kb (or even 0kb) file will consume at least 4kb of disk space. Not only that, there are many hidden files and folders which probably weren't even counted when you checked the total space consumed by your files.

For example, with windows set to "show hidden files and folders" my totals for all files is 282MB. Normally, windows is set to hide hidden files and with it set that way, my total file size reads only 277GB.

To complicate matters, a 500GB hard drive can only hold 465GB worth of files after it's formatted using the NTFS file system.

[napolionii]

Thanks once again. Fortunately, now that I've regained my missing 50gb I no longer need to be careful about space.

[IMiteBable2help]

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