my C:\ drive on my laptop, my only hard drive, says it is using 25 gb of space when i click on its properties... however... when i select all files in the C: drive it says i am only using 9.0 gb and i cannot figure out what is taking up so much space... or what happened to it all... please help...

Title Edited - Please follow new posting rules from now on.

--Zxian

Did you take into account hidden/system files?

NTFS alternate data streams (if using NTFS)?

You may also want to CHKDSK/SCANDISK to see if the free space is being reported incorrectly.

@azriel707 - i cant help but thinking that this has nothing to so with software but a OS problem and should be moved to one of these catagories

(i hope mods dont mind me pointing this stuff out)

and we need more information, like which OS you r running

Edited March 13, 200620 yr by wolf74481

oh sorry about that ... but i am running on windows xp... service pack 2... professional... and i did do the CHKDSK/SCANDISK and it still says the same thing and i have also taken into account the hidden and system files... and i dont think i am using ntfs because i dont know what it is... is there anymore information that is needed??

oh sorry about that ... but i am running on windows xp... service pack 2... professional... and i did do the CHKDSK/SCANDISK and it still says the same thing and i have also taken into account the hidden and system files... and i dont think i am using ntfs because i dont know what it is... is there anymore information that is needed??

nope thats all

my C:\ drive on my laptop, my only hard drive, says it is using 25 gb of space when i click on its properties... however... when i select all files in the C: drive it says i am only using 9.0 gb and i cannot figure out what is taking up so much space... or what happened to it all... please help...

When you tried to "Select all" files.... another thing to try is at a command prompt do

dir c:\ /a /s

and wait (very patiently) for the final tally.

Also don't forget the "System Volume Information" folder (if you have "System Restore" turned on) can hold quite a bit of data, and won't show up on searching/etc unless you do some messing around/up with the permissions/ownership of that folder.

i tried "dir c:\ /a /s" in command prompt... and it said about 11 gb used and 2 gb free... which accounts for two gbs... but i have a 32.6 gb hard drive... and i cant figure out where the other 19 gb's are... i have had system restore turned off for quite a while... but i checked it again just in case and it is still off... i cant figure it out...

Do you know if you are using FAT32 or NTFS? Another possible answer (especially if you're using FAT32) is "space marked as used, but not part of a file" (I forget the term for that.)

Maybe a scandisk or other file structure utility is in order?

To see if your running in NTFS or Fat32 format do this --

Click START>CONTROL PANEL>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management

Now under the "File System" section it should tell you what type format your using. It will also show wether or not you have a Hidden Partition on the Hard Disk. Hope this helps you.

Try using this proggie:

DRIVEUSE

http://freezip.cjb.net/freeware/

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/fr...re/driveuse.exe

(only 7Kbytes, so it won't occupy much space)

it will take SOME time to thoroughly scan your hard disk(s).

If you like good looks mixed with power, one of the best graphical representation of hard disk files is SEQUOIAVIEW:

http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

(÷ 500 Kb)

jaclaz

i tried "dir c:\ /a /s" in command prompt... and it said about 11 gb used and 2 gb free... which accounts for two gbs... but i have a 32.6 gb hard drive... and i cant figure out where the other 19 gb's are... i have had system restore turned off for quite a while... but i checked it again just in case and it is still off... i cant figure it out...

20/10 partitioned?

Another possible answer (especially if you're using FAT32) is "space marked as used, but not part of a file" (I forget the term for that.)

Lost clusters.

ok i am running NTFS and the thing said my pc is healthy... the programs said the same thing... and i am not quite sure what 20/10 partitioned is... i've tried another disc scan just in case and it still says the same thing....

Edited March 15, 200620 yr by azriel707

NTFS alternate data streams?

http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Alt...ta_Streams.html

well i did that ads scan and it said 56 files were found but they are all were thumbnails of cd covers... so i deleted what i could.... but i didnt find anything to serious... but thats prolly my problem... sigh... what should i do???