Hard Drive...Help.

When I right click on my D: Drive (Second Hard Drive) it says I have used 8.34 GB but when I open D: and add all the files in there up, it only totals 4.837 GB.


I have done a scandisk and defrag, the drive capacity is 37.2 GB.

How Come.

 

It may not include hidden files and folders. Open My Computer, Tools, Folder Options, View and uncheck all the "hide" entries and check all the "show" entries. This will show hidden and system folders and files.

Your pagefile may not be included in the total amount---search for "pagefile.sys" and see how large that is.

Right-click My Computer and go to Properties.
System Restore tab. Highlight your drive and click Settings. See what amount of space you have reserved for restore points. Mine is set at minimum and I am still able to have a few restore points.

Search for *.dmp
These are memory dump files that are created when the system crashes. Delete them all.

Go to Control Panel, Admin Tools, Services. Double-click on the Indexing Service and disable it (the index files accumulate after a while).

Then go to Disk Cleanup and run that. You will see a tab for more options, click to delete the system restore files (it will keep the last one), and then run Disk Cleanup as usual.

Not sure any of this answered your question since it was mostly about how to recover disk space, but is the amount closer if you show the hidden files?

 

Another factor that will add to the confusion (and will be worse if you are using FAT32 rather than NTFS) is block/cluster size and the way systems deal with them.

On a drive larger than 32Gb, FAT32 will format so that the smallest block (cluster) available to store data is 32Kb. And if any part of a cluster is used, the entire cluster is considered full and will be reported as used space.

Especially for folks who have lots of small files on their drive, you can lose a ton of space this way. For example, if you put 1000 files of 1Kb each on your drive, you will have used 37,000 Kb of space to store 1000 Kb of data.

Using the same example, if you converted to NTFS which uses 4Kb clusters no matter what size the Hd, those same 1000 files would only occupy 4000 Kb of disk space.

Granted, most of your files will be a good deal larger than that and a large file will be more efficient at using storage since it will completely fill all the clusters it uses except the last one - if said file isn't fragmented at all.

In general though, I imagine that if you converted the file system on your Hd to NTFS, you would free up considerable space that is now being wasted. And it is certainly easy enough to do. Open a cmd window and use
c:\> convert /fs:ntfs

 

Also I have just checked my C: drive and this also shows that I have used more H/D space than I really have Shows used 4.06 GB..Actual used = 2.96 GB
O/S Win XP NTFS.

Below Is A Mail I received From A Friend.
It's a bit high brow for me.
Maybe you can understand it ?.

There is a 4 GB limit on the size of the saved file. The size of the drive being backup up can be larger. The output file must be less than that 4 GB limit. When the 4 GB limit is reached during the backup process, you'll receive and error message.


Thanks for all your help.

Could it be something to do with system restore requiring H/D space ?

 

In addition to Newt's contribution, the MFT (Master File Table) also takes up space. That is somewhat adjustable by the OS. If disk space gets low, the MFT will shrink in an attempt to accomodate it.
Are you getting low on space, or just solving a mystery?

The idea from your friend is not really relevant unless you save 4 gig files, and you obviously don't have any from the stats you gave.

In other words, if you are trying to see how much space is available to you and your programs, the amount given in the drive's properties is the best way to judge.