Missing Space

[DentyCracker]

Do you have lots of small files?

[leech]

I was suffering this same issue a while back, the solution to my issue was indeed the System Restore. Except that after I disabled it, and it removed all the system restore crap, there was still about 8gb of OLD system restore files (from previous installs of XP) After running the built-in disk cleanup, I got it back. Can't gaurantee that it's the same issue here, but you could give it a shot.

Leech

[Gurm]

Yep. There are certain things that AREN'T taken into consideration. Anything that lives in the System Restore or System Volume Information or Recyle Bin folders, but ISN'T counted as part of the CURRENT inventory of said folders... goes into a kind of 'black hole' of sorts.

- Gurm

[Admiral]

That's why I first set system restore to take up the minimum allowed space before turning it off and going into computer management to see if the service is really disabled. I do the same thing for the Norton protection.

My only black holes have been the Temp folder in Documents and Settings\"user"\Local Settings (with archives/shields for which the temporary setup files weren't automatically removed after installation) and Nero not having the "delete image after writing" option checked when copying CDs .


Just a thought, you can try to reactivate system restore and the Norton Protection, limit the reserved sapce for both, purge the Norton protected files and turn them both off after. And also check for CD burning and other software that might create images or temporary files that are not removed after.

[cbman]

I'll have to check it out when I get home... but I'm at a friends right now with an almost identical system to my friends with Norton Recycle Protection on and System Restore off and with the folder compression his data is actually 2GB larger than the free space on the drive... I will check it out though...

[Kruzin]

ewwww
Folder compression = pure evil
I can't believe they still build that into the OS with all the problems it creates.

[cbman]

Alright... I've gone through this drive file by file and folder by folder and cleaned up temp files and all that other crap... uninstalled systemworks and made sure everything is 100 percent... and its still missing 4 GB... Stupid thing

[spadnos]

Hmmmm.

Two things come to mind - not sure if the info is available from the images since I don't have XP (and can't test things for myself).

First: I noticed that Indexing is on for all of these drives - I don't know if the index is stored in the System Volume Information directory or what.

Second - Directories. When you check disk usage for files (by selecting everything and using the properties window), it doesn't add in the space used by the directory entries themselves (verified on Win2k).
Obviously the directories won't take up 30% of your used space, but you may be experiencing several things which combine to give you the (truly) wacky stuff you're seeing.

- Steve

[Wombat]

What do they look like under some other partition manager?

[cbman]

If anyone has any file managers that they recommend I try... feel free to pop the name in this thread... its just getting interesting now

[isochar]

Did anyone mention Hibernation?

Also, if you have Object Desktop from Stardock, there is a program called "DriveScan" which will map out where all the hard drive space goes. If you don't have that, there is a program called Treesize Pro that does the same thing. (Only nicer, imho)

[cbman]

Hibernation is one thing that I always turn off on any system we build due to all the problems we run into with it... its off... and even if it was on it would only take up space on one drive (Hyberfil.sys I believe) so that wouldn't account for the problem I'm having with the one backup drive.

I'll search for those programs when I get home and use them to see what results from their information on the drives

[cbman]

Oh and I'll disable indexing to see if that corrects any of the issues

[Jon P. Inghram]

Try using "fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo c:" (or which ever drive.)

Version : 3.1
Number Sectors : 0x0000000004a852c0
Total Clusters : 0x0000000000950a58
Free Clusters : 0x00000000006098df
Total Reserved : 0x0000000000000000
Bytes Per Sector : 512
Bytes Per Cluster : 4096
Bytes Per FileRecord Segment : 1024
Clusters Per FileRecord Segment : 0
Mft Valid Data Length : 0x00000000049efc00
Mft Start Lcn : 0x000000000031ae1d
Mft2 Start Lcn : 0x00000000004ac52f
Mft Zone Start : 0x000000000031f800
Mft Zone End : 0x0000000000444f80

And "fsutil volume diskfree c:"

Total # of free bytes : 25930027008
Total # of bytes : 40007729152
Total # of avail free bytes : 25930027008

[cbman]

Results of fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo c:

NTFS Volume Serial Number : 0x08acdee6acdecd76
Version : 3.1
Number Sectors : 0x0000000012a38089
Total Clusters : 0x0000000002547011
Free Clusters : 0x0000000002021067
Total Reserved : 0x0000000000000000
Bytes Per Sector : 512
Bytes Per Cluster : 4096
Bytes Per FileRecord Segment : 1024
Clusters Per FileRecord Segment : 0
Mft Valid Data Length : 0x0000000002797c00
Mft Start Lcn : 0x00000000000c0000
Mft2 Start Lcn : 0x00000000012a3808
Mft Zone Start : 0x0000000001c09ee0
Mft Zone End : 0x00000000020b0560

Result fsutil volume diskfree c:

Total # of free bytes : 137993019392
Total # of bytes : 160105041920
Total # of avail free bytes : 137993019392

That adds up to what the drive properties reports free... I'm just getting the other file manager util now to see what it says