Inconsistent HD space readings

[Guest]

I have one 150 GB drive on my Vista machine (It reads as 149 GB on "My
Computer").

So the problem is, I go to the drive properties and get the following:

File system: NTFS
Used space: 68,533,264,384 bytes (63.8 GB)
Free space: 91,505,643,520 bytes (85.2 GB)
Capacity: 160,038,907,904 bytes (149 GB)

Great. So I start wondering what's takin up so much room. So I open the
drive and select all the folders (after selecting show hidden and protected
system files), right click and go to properties.

Location: All in C:\
Size: 42.8 GB (46,029,400,241 bytes)
Size on disk: 43.0 GB (46,189,899,776 bytes)

What the? That's a difference of 20 GB! Where is the rest of my drive space?!?

I've also downloaded a third party program that gives me the size of all
folders at any point of the directory tree. It also only reports 44932.39Mb.

Where is the other 20Gb? I've already limited my Recycling Bin to only half
a gig (512 MB). What else is using my drive? I ask because I'm a little short
to back up some stuff from my main comp.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Z,

System Restore in Vista reserves 15% of the volume by default. That'd be
roughly 22GB of your drive, this will not show when you are checking the
total size of files and folders as it may not all be in use. Also, make sure
you are adding in the size of the paging and hibernate files, both of which
will reserve considerable space.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Z]

22 Gb is a bit of an excess isn't it? I'm gunna google and see if I can find
anything to lower that by a bit. I thought about paging and hibernate files
and found those when I exposed 'protected system files'. Using the cleandisk
utility I deleted them and still found that 20 gb difference, so I'm guessing
it's entirely System Restore.

Thanks!

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Excess or not, that is the default. Regardless of drive size the percentage
of reserved space is the same in order to provide for a sufficient number of
points and shadow copies. The tool to reduce the size is vssadmin, while I
don't recommend it, you find instructions on its use here:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/diskspacev.html

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Brian]

I experience the same problem. My HDD says that it is using 208 gigabytes
out of my 698 available, whereas if I add up all of my folders in C:
(Including hidden/protected folders like "programdata")

IT only adds up to a little over 115 GB....
When I first started using Vista x64 it was not like this. I have performed
disk cleanup to no avail. Where is this other 70-85 GB?...That's a HUGE
amount missing

I am using a RAID 5, but I don't think that would affect it. . I already
lost my space to the Parity drive because I installed 4x 250 GB drives (=
1TB) and its worth 698 GB. understandably

 

[Rashid]

I have a similar problem with Windows Visa Business, on a laptop I bought 2
months ago.

The machine has single 110 Gig HDD and 3 Gigs RAM

The File usage is around 42 Gigs, but Windows Explorer/File Manager tells me
usage is 91 Gigs. When using an independent Files/Folders stats tool I see
that only 42 Gigs is used, plus I have the usual pagesys files which in total
might add up to 50 Gigs, so where is the lost 43 Gigs, which appears to be
double reading of my actual file usage.

I regularly clear out temporary files, recycle bin etc. I see these
postings, but see no clear reason for the problem, anyone got any advice?

Cheers

 

[Rashid]

Additionally, I just turned off system restore( a suggestion I saw in another
thread) and recovered only a further 7 Gigs, so there is stil something amiss.

Cheers

 

[Brian]

I noticed my HDD went "back to normal" after I defragmented. You may want to
try this, but I doubt this solution is permanent.