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Having bought a new laptop I am trying to clean up my old one to pass it on to a family member. I have deleted all personal documents, pictures, etc, just left some essential applications such as an email program, a photo editing program, an antivirus program, Mozilla Firefox, nothing major... Total disc space is 60 GB. Adding up all the programs and system files in the Windows folder etc gives me approx. 10 GB. According to C-drive properties free space is 18 GB. I can't for the life of me figure out where the remaining 30 + GB are hiding. I did disc clean-up and defragmented the drive. According to all indications there are no major problems. Any ideas, any thoughts what's happening here?
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I did it, no problems there: basic partition, healthy system, capacity 55.88 GB (not 60 as I had assumed), free space 18.92 GB, 33% free, overhead 0% (whatever that means)
A 60 Gb disk once formatted will have ~56 Gb spare space - the remainder is taken up with the file system. I have an empty 160 Gb drive in my computer - reads as 153 Gb as formatted - this is normal.
The anomaly you note re free space has cropped up before here - I'll see what I can find.
If the computer is working flawlessly, disable System Restore, reboot and restart System Restore. By doing that, you free a big chunk of space, occupied by old Restore Points. If you want to, you can create a new Restore Point manually but I believe XP will do that by itself.
The comp may have a hidden partition or two, one may contain a boot menu and the other the files needed to use the manufactuirer restore disk/restore program.
Thanks all for you input. I was able to recover about 6 GB by eliminating the windows restore files. It still leaves a large portion unaccounted for. I have decided to reformat the drive and reinstall the applications. Thanks again.
Thanks! I downloaded and ran TreeSize Free, but it did not solve the mystery. According to TreeSize my C drive contains 10,650 MB. System Volume Information is listed as access denied, but it has 0 MB - I assume that is System Restore which I had disabled.
When I right-click on the C drive in My Computer, it shows that 31,100 MB are used - not the 10,650 MB indicated by TreeSize - and that 24,700 MB is free space, giving a total capacity of 55,800 MB. That still leaves 20,450 MB unaccounted for!
As an aside, I was surprised to see 709 MB allocated to the Recycler although the Recycle Bin is empty.
As an aside, I was surprised to see 709 MB allocated to the Recycler although the Recycle Bin is empty.
Allocated size is set under Recycle Bin Properties (right click Recycle Bin > Properties) When the allocated space is filled the oldest deleted files are dumped to make way for new ones.
System Volume Information is listed as access denied, but it has 0 MB - I assume that is System Restore which I had disabled.
Yes, that's the folder you emptied by disabling/enabling System Restore. That folder is tricky, access denied and it doesn't even display the size correctly. Even if there are "tons" of Restore Points, the size will be displayed as 0 (zero).
Allocated size is set under Recycle Bin Properties (right click Recycle Bin > Properties) When the allocated space is filled the oldest deleted files are dumped to make way for new ones.
What brand laptop is it? If it's a brand name laptop then almost for sure there is a hidden partition or two taking up disk space. Download a live linux cd and boot from it. Run its partitioner and it will show you all partitions.
Active and free space counts can be effected by certain disk errors.
I would do a chkdsk and then recheck the counts after.
Start-Run
type
chkdsk /r
ok
It will warn of not having exclusive access and ask for permission do do the chkdsk on the next reboot. OK that and reboot.
But before doing this, since you have cleaned/removed so much I would run ATF-Cleaner "select all" do Firefox and Opera also, run 2-3 times for each till it says no more to clean.
Also run CCleaner Temps and Registry repeatedly untill it comes up clean.
Finally I agree with surferdude2 on formating even if in the end you can not resolve this issue. Because it has never caused you and issue and so may be a reporting issue only (very likely).
