Vista defragment losing hard drive sapce

[Henry]

I just got a new computer with a 750 gb hard drive, but actually says 683gb.
I loaded a few programs and games on it which took about 50gb so now im down
to 653gb or so right? well after loading on that much info i decided it would
be good to do a disk defrag so 12 hours later and with it still running i
thought this couldn't be right so i cancelled it. I then went to look at my
hard drive specs and saw that i was down to 591gb! I then thought ill just
try another disk defrag in the morning so i did and 2 hours later it finished
this time, again stealing hard drive space. i was now down to 582gb. I dont
understand what is going on and have only been able to find one other
discussion on the internet with similar problems. Has anyone heard about this
happening?

 

[Bob Campbell]

I just got a new computer with a 750 gb hard drive, but actually says
683gb.

Perfectly normal so far.

I loaded a few programs and games on it which took about 50gb so now im
down
to 653gb or so right?

Um, no. 683 - 50 = 633, not 653. But whatever.

well after loading on that much info i decided it would
be good to do a disk defrag so 12 hours later and with it still running i
thought this couldn't be right so i cancelled it.

Forget defragging. NTFS doesn't need it, and Vista will keep things
ordered automatically anyways.

If I was you I would reformat and start over.

 

[Henry]

hmm..still that doesn't really answer what the problem could be. A drop in
hard drive space like that is not normal, could I have a faulty hard drive?
The drive also won't shut up. It's constantly making those grinding
processing noises or whatever you wanna call it.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

hmm..still that doesn't really answer what the problem could be. A drop in
hard drive space like that is not normal, could I have a faulty hard
drive?
The drive also won't shut up. It's constantly making those grinding
processing noises or whatever you wanna call it.

You mean it is looking at files and producing an index?

HTH
-pk

 

[CZ]

Forget defragging. NTFS doesn't need it, and Vista will keep things
ordered automatically anyways.

Bob:

Per the defrag command:
Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT fragments = 13,206

Do you see anything undesirable about that last line?

It now reads "= 2" thanks to PerfectDisk 2008.