"Used Space"

[Guest]

When checking the status of drive C:, I am told that 27.5 GB has been used,
however this is about 4GB higher than before with no apparent reason. The
only change was adding PC-cillin to my computer. The really strange part
though is that when I check the C: drive folder by folder, the total used
space is only 23 GB, what I would expect. Does anyone know what is going on?

thanks

 

[Paula Januszkiewicz]

Try in System Properties check the pagefile size. Default settings are 1.5*
Your RAM. So if U have 1GB= +1,5 GB used but hide (but U can see it in
properties) You can set it manually.

Use Ace Utilities and option: Protect => Wipe Deleted File Data. It deletes
the space used by deleted items, and erases the real, not logical, data.

Hope it will help
Paula Januszkiewicz

 

[Guest]

Hi Paula,

Thanks for the suggestions. Sorry but I am a real neophyte with this. What
is Ace Utilities? Also, I have 512MB RAM, so if the page file were set to
1.5, that would only give me a 250 MB difference overall, I think, is that
correct?

Chris

 

[Al Romanosky]

You cannot verify space usage via a folder by folder . Notice that there are
two sizes listed for each folder and file e.g. "file size" and "size on
disk" - housekeeping functions can account for size variation - following is
a good reference:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;273588

 

[Guest]

Hi Al,

Would the difference be so high, about 20%, also, I am a bit suspicious that
some "used space" is not accurate because it jumped up by sevarl GB when I
got rid of Mcaffee, and installed PC-cillin.

What do you think

thanks

Chris

 

[Guest]

Also, is there "housekeeping" functions thta would clear up the discrepancy?
I have run Check disc, cleanup and defrag

 

[Al Romanosky]

Differences in size (according to Microsoft) will vary... some factors
involved are: File permission, Hidden system files and Hardware
configurations and space used by temp files generated by background
programs- some utilities such as anti-virus are notorious resource "hogs".
There are size variations also due to size notation: as you know one KB is
1024 bytes- usually reported as 1 kb. IK - in other words a 600 mb CD
actually has approx 614,400,000 bytes not 600,000,000 as reported. (Whew!)
you can see the effect at the gigabyte range.

 

[Paula Januszkiewicz]

ACE Util. it's a program that can be downloaded here:
http://www.acelogix.com/.
Nice soft

Problem is, what U are looking at? When U choose properties of all folders,
on your system partition, from the popup menu. U should look for 2
positions:

1. Size
2. Size on Disk (I'm not sure if it sounds like a say, I have a polish
system, but the context is similar)

Ad1. This is a real size of your file.
Ad2. Depends on your file system (FAT32, NTFS, FAT and so on). For example U
have on your HDD clusters 4kB, and you have a 1 kB file to save, the real
size of it is 1kB, but on your hdd U have to write it into one cluster
(4kB), and then U have only one file for one cluster, so these 3 kB are
marked as "written" and they are logically "lost". There are some 3rd party
tools that can change this what U are talking about: real size= logical
size, during formatting change the size of cluster:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q314878

Quite tricky, there is another situation, which U may be interested in:
producers use to tell about unreal capacity, they count: 1000B=1KB,
1000KB=1MB and1000MB=1GB and so on. U know that is like this: 1GB to
it's1024MB, MB it's1024KB...
So when U have 40GB HDD it means, that U have 39062500KB = 38146,9MB = 37,2
GB.

Remember that paging file (if U have default it is: 768MB) and other
important system files are hidden. PF is not included into the size report
in properties. So if U think that U can f.ex. 768 mb free on your system
partition, and U see the message that U are running put of space, dont worry
then U will know what is going on .

Hope it helped.
Paula Januszkiewicz

 

[Guest]

Ok, I used Ace utilities, and wiped out the deleted files and the problem was
fixed!

thanks

Chris

 

[Guest]

ace did the trick, thanks!

 

[Paula Januszkiewicz]

No problem

ace did the trick, thanks!