On Wed, 5 Mar 2008 11:32:44 -0600, malestrom
<(E-Mail Removed)> put finger to keyboard and
composed:
>
>Hello.
>
>I would like to share I problem I encountered and hopefully I could get
>some help.I have an external hard drive,a Lacie Porsche design which was
>working flawlessly.
>
>I have Xp professional with Sp2 installed.It's a 500Gb external.I also
>have a 500 Gb Seagate external and yet another 500 Gb Lacie
>installed(not the Porsche design)
>
>Up to yesterday I had 200Gb or some, free now I have only 9Gb!!!
>
>I have only 1 folder installed,which is 273Gb.How can I have only 9Gb
>free?!
>
>At startup it says windows is checking for disk conficiency so I let it
>check and it says that I have 200 Gb free space.
>
>But when I log in to check I see that it has only 9!
>
>As you can see below ,my drives:
>
>'[image: http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/5488/95668382en4.th.jpg]'
>(http://img125.imageshack.us/my.php?i...5668382en4.jpg)
>
>K:Lacie porshe design
>E:My other Lacie
>D:Free agent
>
>If I right click "properties" I get the same result:
>
>'[image: http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/1461/29975970bo2.th.jpg]'
>(http://img125.imageshack.us/my.php?i...9975970bo2.jpg)
>
>If I click to open the Lacie you will see a folder "Hiper" :
>
>'[image: http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/5896/62715222sn2.th.jpg]'
>(http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=62715222sn2.jpg)
>
>Right clicking it and "properties" you will see that its 229Gb:
>
>'[image: http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/4188/29970726oz3.th.jpg]'
>(http://img125.imageshack.us/my.php?i...9970726oz3.jpg)
>
>Even using a file commander you can see that it has 9Gb left:
>
>'[image: http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/3189/36169001cf9.th.jpg]'
>(http://img125.imageshack.us/my.php?i...6169001cf9.jpg)
>
>I would really appreciate any help because I really don't know what to
>do!
>
>Both hard drives are Fat32.Should I move my files to another hard drive
>and format k:?
>
>Thank you so much for your time!!
>
>Chris
>Greece
According to MS documentation (see below), "a provision is made to
store the 'last known' free cluster count on the FAT32 volume so that
it does not have to be computed as soon as an API call is made to ask
how much free space there is on the volume (like at the end of a
directory listing)."
This "Free_Count" word is located in the FSInfo sector and "contains
the last known free cluster count on the volume. If the value is
0xFFFFFFFF, then the free count is unknown and must be computed. Any
other value can be used, but is not necessarily correct."
Essentially what this means is that, if the system crashes or the
drive is removed before the "Free_Count" word is updated, then the
free disc space may be incorrectly reported by any utility that relies
on this value. Instead, the correct free space can be calculated by
adding up the free clusters in the FAT. This is done during a Win9x
Scandisk and probably during a Win XP Chkdsk.
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo.../fatgen103.doc
- Franc Zabkar
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