Deleted file, but disk space not freed

G

Guest

Hi,

Recently, I tried to install an old game on my computer running XP SP2. It
didn't install, so I just deleted the files that were copied onto my hard
drive and cleared the Recycle Bin.

When I went to check my free space on my drive, I found that deleting the
files didn't free up any space even though I can't find the files anywhere on
my computer. Now, my hard drive is essentially 1 GB smaller because these
files are lost.

I've run chkdsk, which didn't find anything wrong.
I ran Restoration and WinDirStat and couldn't find anything and they didn't
fix anything.

Any ideas on how I can track these rogue files down and get them to be
deleted?

Thanks for your help!
 
G

Guest

Bob,

No, I don't have Norton on my machine.

I forgot to add that I also ran Disk Cleanup and CCleaner. Neither one was
able to free this space for me.

I suspect that I am screwed...
 
P

philo

SandyD said:
Bob,

No, I don't have Norton on my machine.

I forgot to add that I also ran Disk Cleanup and CCleaner. Neither one was
able to free this space for me.

I suspect that I am screwed...
Click to expand...


Maybe a logical error of some type

run chkdsk /f
 
G

Gerry

Sandy

Any other other back up software e,g Rollback?

How large is the hard disk and how much free space?

Is the hard drive formatted as FAT32 or NTFS?

Go to Start, Control Panel, Folder Options, View, Advanced Settings and
verify that the box before "Show hidden files and folders" is checked
and "Hide protected operating system files " is unchecked. You may need
to scroll down to see the second item. You should also make certain that
the box before "Hide extensions for known file types" is not checked.
Next in Windows Explorer make sure View, Details is selected and then
select View, Choose Details and check before Name, Type, Total Size, and
Free Space.

It is likely that an allocation of 12% has been made to System Restore
on your C partition which is over generous. I would reduce it to 700
mb. Right click your My Computer icon on the Desktop and select System
Restore. Place the cursor on your C drive select Settings but this
time find the slider and drag it to the left until it reads 700 mb and
exit. When you get to the Settings screen click on Apply and OK and
exit.

Select Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp to
Empty your Recycle Bin and Remove Temporary Internet Files. Also
select Start, All Programs, accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp,
More Options, System Restore and remove all but the latest System
Restore point. Run Disk Defragmenter.

Open Disk Defragmenter and click on Analyse. Select View Report and
click on Save As and Save. Now find VolumeC.txt in your My Documents
Folder and post a copy.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
G

Guest

Gerry, see below...

Thanks for your help.

I can totally see the problem too. When I did the Disk Defrag analysis, it
lists used space as 36.37 GB, but when I ran WinDirStat, it showed total
usage of around 33.5 GB.

I really want those 2+GB back.

Grrr.....

Gerry said:
Sandy

Any other other back up software e,g Rollback?
No


How large is the hard disk and how much free space?
Click to expand...

See below
Is the hard drive formatted as FAT32 or NTFS?
NTFS


Go to Start, Control Panel, Folder Options, View, Advanced Settings and
verify that the box before "Show hidden files and folders" is checked
and "Hide protected operating system files " is unchecked. You may need
to scroll down to see the second item. You should also make certain that
the box before "Hide extensions for known file types" is not checked.
Next in Windows Explorer make sure View, Details is selected and then
select View, Choose Details and check before Name, Type, Total Size, and
Free Space.
Click to expand...

It's not a hidden file. I know I deleted the file and cleared the Recycle
bin.
It is likely that an allocation of 12% has been made to System Restore
on your C partition which is over generous. I would reduce it to 700
mb. Right click your My Computer icon on the Desktop and select System
Restore. Place the cursor on your C drive select Settings but this
time find the slider and drag it to the left until it reads 700 mb and
exit. When you get to the Settings screen click on Apply and OK and
exit.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how this will help. I guess it frees some space for the
future, but my problem is different.
Select Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp to
Empty your Recycle Bin and Remove Temporary Internet Files. Also
select Start, All Programs, accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp,
More Options, System Restore and remove all but the latest System
Restore point. Run Disk Defragmenter.

Open Disk Defragmenter and click on Analyse. Select View Report and
click on Save As and Save. Now find VolumeC.txt in your My Documents
Folder and post a copy.
Click to expand...

Volume (C:)
Volume size = 37.25 GB
Cluster size = 4 KB
Used space = 36.37 GB
Free space = 903 MB
Percent free space = 2 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 16 %
File fragmentation = 27 %
Free space fragmentation = 5 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 76,190
Average file size = 578 KB
Total fragmented files = 6,944
Total excess fragments = 52,897
Average fragments per file = 1.69

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 773 MB
Total fragments = 22

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 7,966
Fragmented folders = 399
Excess folder fragments = 1,444

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 100 MB
MFT record count = 84,529
Percent MFT in use = 82 %
Total MFT fragments = 30
 
G

Gerry

Sandy

Reconciling space occupied by files plus free disk space to disk size
can be problematic. I am not familiar with WinDirStat but I think ypu
will find that all these type of utilities merely collect figures from
the operating system and present them in a format that makes them
easier to understand and interpret. The figures are not totally
accurate. Some of the reasons and problems that reconciliation brings
out are explained below. Please remember, however, that I am not an
expert on these issues.

The statistics usually do not take account of file compression. These
files are often seen in blue type in Windows Explorer. If you examine
the file properties you will see that there is a file size and a size on
disk. Windows Explorer ( and probably WinDirStat ) counts the file size
ignoring the size on disk. Given that usually all the Uninstall Windows
Update folders are compressed this causes a sizable discrepancy. This
means in your case the overall discrepancy could be larger than you
think.

In my earlier post I gave details of how to Show hidden files. However,
this is only part of the story. Some folders and files still remain
hidden. You need to take further measures to see the content of the
System Volume Information folder (primarily concerned with System
Restore). Given that the default allocation is 12% this could amount to
4.46 gb depending on whether the extent to which the space allocation
has been taken up. How are the System Volume Information folder
reflected in the figures provided by WinDirStat?

Open Disk Defragmenter, note the amount of free disk space and leave
Disk Defragmenter open. Select Start, All Programs, Accessories, System
Tools, Disk CleanUp, More Options, System Restore and remove all but the
latest System Restore point. Now look in Disk Defragmenter and see how
the amount of free disk space has changed.

Mike Hall has mentioned your pagefile. Your's is 773 mb. This file is
sits in the root of C i.e. not in a folder. See how the file is dealt
with by WinDirStat.

Another large file on some systems is hiberfil.sys. This can also sit in
the root of C. Check to see if you have this file and how it is counted
by WinDirStat. I don't use the Hibernation feature and as a result do
not have a hiberfil.sys.

There are other files created by third party software which are kept
hidden. Norton hide their Recycle Bin. Backup software can get users not
realising there are hidden files. They discover something odd is going
on when they delete a large file to create more free disk space only to
find it has made no difference or in some cases they have lost free disk
space.

Your pagefile is a mess. It needs to be contiguous as it is fragenting
free disk space. What settings do you have? Unless you intend removing
files and extensive housekeeping you could do with adding a second
drive. I may be able to suggest some temporary measures to relieve
pressure on disk space if you need them. A copy of the Most fragmented
file in Disk Defragmenter could be helpful.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
G

Guest

Well, I see a lot of interesting replies, and I thank you all for your input.

But, to paraphrase Capt Kirk in Star Trek II (if y'all are old enough for
that movie...), like a poor marksman, you...keep...missing...the...target!
Lol!

The fact is that I deleted 1+GB of files. My free space was around 700 MB
before I emptied the recycle bin and was 700MB after.

Something got messed up with the file system and I really want to know how
to recover that space, if only because, as a former sw engineer, this is
really really really pissing me off.

One question for anyone, is there any way I can decode a EXE file to see
what it does? Is there some freeware that I could use to look at the
commands it runs?

Anyway, I'm going through the five stages of Grief and am at Anger right
now. I think Depression is next...

Unknown,
I will be defragging my HD today. I was putting it off because it takes so
long, plus I don't believe defragging will help me get my space back, but I
can always hope.

Heybub,
Yes, a new HD is very cheap. Like I said above, it's more personal now.
It's me vs the software now! Mono a mono. Death cage match, baby!

Mike Hall,
This is very interesting. What does the page file do? And, what can I do
to make it smaller? Tell me more!

Gerry,
I've printed out your list of ideas. It sounds like you have a lot of good
ways to save disk space, so, when I finally accept that I'm screwed, I'll go
ahead and reduce my system restore from 12%. That will be the biggest
pickup. You also mention the page file, so if you can explain how I can look
at it and manipulate it, I'd greatly appreciate your help.
 
S

Steven Wabik

i got this kind of issue as well. there is nothing you can really do about
it. the only fix for it is to reformat the hard drive, but its not worth it.
i back up my computer to two external hard drives and that issue accures
every so often. after a while one of the drives acumulates over 3GB of
wasted space and i have no idea of where it goes to. the other one has about
1.5GB of wasted space. the two back up hard drives are different sizes.

i reformat the drives every so often to reclaim the space because at one
point after a year one of those drives had over 15GB of wasted space.... now
a days i just reformat the drive if the wasted space exceds a certian
amount, like 2GB or so. one of the backup drives is 20GB and othe other
backup drive is 60GB.

when it comes to data storage now a days we need all the space we can get. i
think this issue has to do with the file cluster size and stuff. the bigger
the file cluster size the more wasted space you have. sometimes when you
delete files the clusters don't get recycled properly and are possibly still
counted as files somewhere on the drive. if they are still counted as files,
there is a way to delete them because they would just be hidden files
somewhere on your hard drive.
 
G

Guest

Steven,

What you said makes some sense to me, but it's really pretty crappy to be
stuck in this position.

Thanks for your input!
 
S

Steven Wabik

yea it does. i'm still trying to figure out why it happens. i think the
smaller the file cluster the less likely the issue is likely to accure over
time. even though there is less wasted hard drive space in smaller cluster
sizes.

you can get utilities to change the cluster sizes, and some utilities can
change the cluster sizes on the drives without erasing the data.
 

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