Backup drive shows too much used space

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rick
  • Start date Start date
R

Rick

I do weekly full backups to an 300 GB external USB hard
drive with the built-in Windows Vista backup program.
On my entre C: drive I've only used about 100 GB, and
this of course includes both the OS, apps, and user data
files.

I just looked at the J: backup drive in Windows Explorer
and the pie chart of Properties is showing the Used
Space as 200 GB which really surprises me. I don't get
this. On this backup drive there's only a single parent
folder called RICK. The Properties of this folder shows
only 21 GB of files. Yet Properties of the drive itself
shows a pie chart of 200 GB Used Space.

Something is taking up a lot of extra space on the
backup drive and I'm not sure what it is.

I did a Disk Cleanup which found a Recycle Bin that
hadn't been emptied out, but that only released about 15
GB.

If this is any clue: before doing each full backup I
manually delete the previous week's backup from the hard
drive.

Any thoughts? Thanks for any help.
 
Rick said:
I do weekly full backups to an 300 GB external USB hard
drive with the built-in Windows Vista backup program.
On my entre C: drive I've only used about 100 GB, and
this of course includes both the OS, apps, and user data
files.

I just looked at the J: backup drive in Windows Explorer
and the pie chart of Properties is showing the Used
Space as 200 GB which really surprises me. I don't get
this. On this backup drive there's only a single parent
folder called RICK. The Properties of this folder shows
only 21 GB of files. Yet Properties of the drive itself
shows a pie chart of 200 GB Used Space.

Something is taking up a lot of extra space on the
backup drive and I'm not sure what it is.

I did a Disk Cleanup which found a Recycle Bin that
hadn't been emptied out, but that only released about 15
GB.

If this is any clue: before doing each full backup I
manually delete the previous week's backup from the hard
drive.

Any thoughts? Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...



What Norton product are you using?
 
Some Norton products do, or used to have this "Protected Recycle Bin" thing,
which is hidden, and could be the cause of the reduced disk space you're
seeing.

I no longer use Norton products but I know that some years ago their
"SystemWorks" type suites used this protected recycle bin thing, perhaps
their latest security products still do.
 
Thanks -- no, I've never used Norton products.

Any other thoughts about what could be hogging disk
space invisibly?
 
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