Computers... damnit

[Ell]

well,
its about that time of the month again, and my computer has gone crazy.
This time, its my HDD playing silly buggers with me.
its a 53gb segate drive, which im using for storage.
the problem is that as i delete a few gig of old stuff, no space frees on it, and it still claims to have 2.15 gb of free space. no more.
Im running XP, and for the moment formatting isnt an option because its got loads of important stuff on it, and i have nothing to back it up to.
when i highlite all the folders files, it says there is only 39gb worth. but still only 2.15gb of free space on a 53 gb drive!
will farkin come to the rescue?

cheers everyone, hope your having a good sunday recovering from mardi gras.

 

[Goobs]

Try emptying the recycle bin?

 

[atmo]

It's probably hidden/protected files & folders.

Open explorer. Go to tools > folder options > view tab. Select 'show hidden files & folders' and untick 'hide protected operating system files'.

As for why the space isnt freeing up as you delete files, you're most likely just moving them to the recycle bin. Try emptying it.

 

[Ell]

ive already done the view all hidden files and folders, and the recycle bin claims to be empty - hence why this is such a noodle scratcher.

 

[north_shore]

the reason would be because f hidden files and folders and you operateing system which would not show up on your disc space

 

[donthucktoflat]

most windows files (for you OS) will not show up, as will any files for office. if you have office pro and XP pro it'll take up a fair chunk of your space yet it won't show up on a C drive scan

 

[Ell]

the reason would be because f hidden files and folders and you operateing system which would not show up on your disc space

firstly, i can already view hidden files and folders,
secondly, it does show how much disk space the OS is using,
thirdly, there is NO OS installed on this drive,
and finally, the hidden folders problem was already posted.
[/end rant]

there seems to be some mysterious black hole happening on this hdd.

is there any way to view the recycle bins on each drive, rather than one recycle bin?
because, it may be lovely windows xp giving me gripe, pretending that its "empty"

*grumbles*

*EDIT*

Just to make it plain and clear, ive attached a screenshot of what the problem looks like.
the first shot it how much free space there is, the second after highlighting all the files on the HDD and getting the properties of all the files- which shows 39.6gb.

 

[nickd]

It could be system restore - System Restore can use (usually) 12% of the drive it's running on. If you have system restore active on the E:\ drive, and you want to turn it off and see if that helps - follow these instructions.

Right click on "My Computer"
Then click on "Properties"
Then a tabbed interface should pop up.
Then click on the tab "System Restore"
Then click on Drive E:\ and click on Settings to the right
Then check "Turn off system restore on this drive"

Also you may want to check the size of your pagefile on that drive, or if you use any video editing software that uses swap space etc.

 

[volcanoman]

is it an old cpu? if it is i have a great solution i did it when my computer cracked the shits and i felt so much better after doing it.
1. unplug the harddrive
2. make your way to a tall place
3. stand on the edge of this tall place.
4. release grip of the hard drive and watch it smash into a million pieces on the ground

it worked for me
dont worry about computers they are complicated and gay
just
ride
instead

 

[Vicious_Fishes]

do a disk defrag

 

[Mo]

since its a 53 gb hdd i'd say there would be some bad sectors.

im guessing you haven't done a partition. as i've never heard of a 53gb hdd before. (maybe a 60gb hdd where 7gig used for the file system, but 7gig is excessive)

 

[tinto]

1) I agree with Mo - Error check the drive. Then defrag it for good measure.

2) Also, do you have a lot of very small files (less than 1k) on the drive? These can appear to take up more physical space on the drive than they should due to how drives handle files below a certain size...

3) How big is your Virtual memory / pagefile?
Right click on my computer-> Properties->Advanced-> 'Settings' under Performance -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory

If Windows is managing this (System Managed size) it will be flexible, so may block off up as much space as it needs at any given moment in time. Try setting it manually if you want the space opened up, but your system performance may suffer.

Good luck.
-Martin

 

[Ell]

well,
in reply to a few bits and bobs, the drive is a 60gb thats been partitioned - theres a 2gb partition which i did years ago just for important documents.

also, if there is no OS installed on that drive, why should there be any pagefile usage on it?
secondly, the fact is that if i delete a 1gb file on the drive, no space is freed (ive already deleted an awful lot of non-essential stuff)
data is getting delted, but no space is being freed?

im sure formatting the drive would solve the problems, but thats no option for me as ive nowhere to back it up to.

*grumble*

*edit* forgot to add the bit about defragging the drive - windows RECOMENDS 15% free space for defrag - but il get that going now

secondly, ive also done all the scandisk etc, with no results.

*more grumbling*

 

[Dozer]

Maybe a disk clean up would help. It removes temp internet files and all that shit.
Start
My computer
Right click on local disk (c
Properties
General
Disk cleanup icon
It will analyse the files that your PC doesn't need and prompt you to remove them (it will highlight them, all you do is click OK).
All PC's that go online should do this once a week, it is good maintenance.

 

[cam-o]

you haven't got Norton's installed do you?
I had huge dramas getting my files to actually go away with Norton's installed as it has a separate recycle bin.

 

[W2ttsy]

now that ive finished laughing.

try deleting files straight off the desktop (or from the folder they are in) by holding down shift while hitting the delete key. it bypasses the recycle bin.

FDISK for memory used to be able to reformat just the partition in question, leaving other partitions intact. Partition Magic can also do this.

maybe its time to look at getting a new drive.

i got a 160Gb SATA drive for $145, so an equivalent IDE drive would most likely be cheaper.

check out the prices from tas PC. IDE and SATA

W2ttsy

 

[Mr_Bob]

a few things that might shed some light.
If your recycle bin or page file are located on this drive it would take up space without showing elsewhere (may also explain why deleting files doesn't help) so try emptying your recycling bin.

also, with a med-large partition like that the cluster size is generally larger for faster indexing. you cluster size might be 16kb (guessing)
now if you have a 1kb file, it will actually be taking up 16kb of your drive.
(a 31kb file would take 32kb of space, but obviously that's a minimal wastage)
the only way to reduce this wastage is to re-partition the drive as 2 (or 3) smaller partitions which have smaller cluster sizes.

the last thing is that if you've setup your XP to use NTFS format for file saving, it actually wastes some space storing extra data so that if errors occur, they can be fixed/detected. (in a nutshell)

hope that helps!