Hard drive usage misreported

[Gil]

I have a 120 Gigabyte Hard Drive and Windows XP Home is reporting it as
about 96% full, 106 Gb used and 7.5 Gb free. The pie chart shows almost
no free space. I know there is nowhere near this much space used, ad I
have been working with this computer for quite a long time. When I get
properties on each folder on C:\ and add up the numbers I get under 20
GB used. All files are shown, none hidden. It had NTFS file system.
I have run CHKDSK and it found no problems, the numbers disappeared too
quickly for me to see them, and I can't find a logfile.
I have run Partition Magic and it shows the drive as almost full, and
that the partition is the whole drive.
I found a utility called Disktec which shows how the space is used, and
the proportions are about right, with My Documents using about 36% of
the used space [quite a lot of mp3's],l and when I add up the numbers it
shows less than 20 Gb of files.
Any help would be appreciated.
Gil Seward

 

[Richard Urban MVP]

Run Partition Magic from the 2 floppy's that you can create in the Windows
version of P.M.

Then, boot from the floppy's and run P.M. At this point Windows is not
running so it can't give you, what you feel, is false information.

If P.M. shows the drive as "almost full", it IS.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Leo]

How much space are you allowing for system restore files, how
large is the paging file, have you deleted Temp files? It might
help if you do a disk cleanup.

 

[Gil]

My thanks to Richard and Leo, both had tips to get me going.
When I tried to check System Restore settings I could not get in to
System Restore [SR], just got error messages, different ones depending
on how I got to SR. I then found a log file that showed that SR had
tried to run every day for a long time. There was also a mention of
"Disk Manager".
I then tried to look at the drive from Partition Magic [PM] after
booting with the PM Rescue disks, but I got an error saying Disk Manager
was installed but not running, and PM could not continue. [This machine
started it's life as a Gateway, the HD was FAT32 and had two partitions.
I had converted to NTFS and merged the two partitions.]
I found an article on Norton's site that discussed using a program named
Wrprog.exe which backs up the data on the HD's first head. I then used
FDISK with the /cmbr switch to clean Disk Manager's signature from the mbr.
Then PM worked from the boot disks and showed the same 96% full info.
Booted back to XP and now I could get to SR, so I turned it off,
rebooted and the hard drive was active for minutes after all the tray
items had loaded, and when I checked disk properties, it said 70% used.

I checked again a few minutes later and it was 40%, and gain and again,
and it finally settled in at 16 GB used and 100 Gb free.

I used what each of you told me, and all is now well. As far as I can
see it was a large number of attempted backups that each failed.

Quite an Odyssey, I would say.

Thanks a bunch.

 

[Richard Urban MVP]

Glad you are sorted out now. Thank you for getting back to us with the
additional information.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

My thanks to Richard and Leo, both had tips to get me going.
When I tried to check System Restore settings I could not get in to System
Restore [SR], just got error messages, different ones depending on how I
got to SR. I then found a log file that showed that SR had tried to run
every day for a long time. There was also a mention of "Disk Manager".
I then tried to look at the drive from Partition Magic [PM] after booting
with the PM Rescue disks, but I got an error saying Disk Manager was
installed but not running, and PM could not continue. [This machine
started it's life as a Gateway, the HD was FAT32 and had two partitions. I
had converted to NTFS and merged the two partitions.]
I found an article on Norton's site that discussed using a program named
Wrprog.exe which backs up the data on the HD's first head. I then used
FDISK with the /cmbr switch to clean Disk Manager's signature from the
mbr.
Then PM worked from the boot disks and showed the same 96% full info.
Booted back to XP and now I could get to SR, so I turned it off, rebooted
and the hard drive was active for minutes after all the tray items had
loaded, and when I checked disk properties, it said 70% used.
I checked again a few minutes later and it was 40%, and gain and again,
and it finally settled in at 16 GB used and 100 Gb free.

I used what each of you told me, and all is now well. As far as I can see
it was a large number of attempted backups that each failed.

Quite an Odyssey, I would say.

Thanks a bunch.

Run Partition Magic from the 2 floppy's that you can create in the
Windows version of P.M.

Then, boot from the floppy's and run P.M. At this point Windows is not
running so it can't give you, what you feel, is false information.

If P.M. shows the drive as "almost full", it IS.

 

[Leo]

Great, I'm pleased you beat your "gremlin."

--

Work Harder Millions On Welfare Depend On You

My thanks to Richard and Leo, both had tips to get me going.
When I tried to check System Restore settings I could not get
in to System Restore [SR], just got error messages, different
ones depending on how I got to SR. I then found a log file
that showed that SR had tried to run every day for a long time.
There was also a mention of "Disk Manager".
I then tried to look at the drive from Partition Magic [PM]
after booting with the PM Rescue disks, but I got an error
saying Disk Manager was installed but not running, and PM could
not continue. [This machine started it's life as a Gateway, the
HD was FAT32 and had two partitions. I had converted to NTFS
and merged the two partitions.]
I found an article on Norton's site that discussed using a
program named
Wrprog.exe which backs up the data on the HD's first head. I
then used FDISK with the /cmbr switch to clean Disk Manager's
signature from the mbr.
Then PM worked from the boot disks and showed the same 96% full
info.
Booted back to XP and now I could get to SR, so I turned it
off, rebooted and the hard drive was active for minutes after
all the tray items had loaded, and when I checked disk
properties, it said 70% used.
I checked again a few minutes later and it was 40%, and gain
and again, and it finally settled in at 16 GB used and 100 Gb
free.

I used what each of you told me, and all is now well. As far
as I can see it was a large number of attempted backups that
each failed.

Quite an Odyssey, I would say.

Thanks a bunch.

Run Partition Magic from the 2 floppy's that you can create in
the Windows version of P.M.

Then, boot from the floppy's and run P.M. At this point
Windows is not running so it can't give you, what you feel, is
false information.

If P.M. shows the drive as "almost full", it IS.