Question

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  • #2251913

    Xp misreporting Used disk space.

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    by sfcohen ·

    I have a client with an IBM laptop (T60). The machine has a 70 GB hard disk in one partition. When you look at the properties of the hard disk it tells you that there is 3.6 GB Free (which means over 65 GB used space). If you tally the size of all the actual files including all hidden files the total used space comes to about 30 GB. Where can the other 35 GB be?? I have been racking my brains about this for over a week, any suggestions.

    Thank You,

    Sfcohen@hotmail.com

All Answers

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    Replies
    • #2498704

      Clarifications

      by sfcohen ·

      In reply to Xp misreporting Used disk space.

      Clarifications

    • #2498701

      Partition(s)

      by toivo talikka ·

      In reply to Xp misreporting Used disk space.

      First of all, even if a hard drive is marketed as 70GB, it hardly ever is. The simple explanation to this is the difference between a Kilobyte – 1024 bytes – and one thousand bytes or 1000. When you get to Gigabytes, the difference is considerable. The manufacturers present the higher figure (1000’s) in their brochures, but Windows Explorer uses the binary 1024 in its calculations. Therefore what is presented as 70GB is in fact a bit more than 65GB in reality.

      Secondly, you should go to Control Panel – Administrative Tools – Computer Management – Disk Manager and have a look at the partitions and the free space. It is possible that the second partition has not been set up, or that your client has inadvertently removed it.

      • #2483233

        Disk Management

        by sfcohen ·

        In reply to Partition(s)

        I checked disk management first thing and it shows only one partition of 70 Gb.

    • #2483211

      System Folders?

      by toivo talikka ·

      In reply to Xp misreporting Used disk space.

      In the Folder Options, is the option ‘Display the contents of system folders’ selected?

    • #2499343

      This sounds like

      by jesus_c ·

      In reply to Xp misreporting Used disk space.

      you only have one partition formatted at 35GB and an unformatted partition of 30GB.Download partition magic which will tell you what has been formated and what has not.But i think that you have two partitions.One formated and one thats not.

      • #2499342

        Windows will

        by jesus_c ·

        In reply to This sounds like

        not show the unpartitioned space , but partition magic will.

        • #2499050

          Checked Partition Magic

          by sfcohen ·

          In reply to Windows will

          And partition magic also showed a 70 GB formatted partition.

          Thanks

        • #2580445

          how did you solve it

          by zhujason721 ·

          In reply to Checked Partition Magic

          I have the same problem with my Thinkpad T60 laptop, i have 70 GB hard drive, used less than 30GB as counting all the folders, but system only calculated less than 1GB space left.
          I want to know how your problem was solved.

          thanks
          jason

    • #2499725

      CheckDisk

      by toivo talikka ·

      In reply to Xp misreporting Used disk space.

      How about checking the hard drive for errors? Right click the hard drive in Windows Explorer, select Properties, then Tools – Check Now… and ‘Automatically fix file system errors’.

    • #2626784

      Hard disk showing less space

      by bharat546 ·

      In reply to Xp misreporting Used disk space.

      It’s the IBM Rescue and Recovery program. RRbacup folder on root drive. This program makes a complete system state image backup and then stores it in the same partititon.

      • #2946587

        I am having the same problem with a T60 misreporting disk space.

        by randy p ·

        In reply to Hard disk showing less space

        The hard drive is 140GB which it says 99GB is used but when I check the properties on the directories I only am coming up with about 35GB of space being used. Window is seeing 60GB of space being used that is not. Before you ask I am showing all folders including hidden and the Rapid Restore partition is on the hidden partition and is only about 7GB.

    • #2946561

      Three areas of reserved disk space NOT reported by Windows

      by deadly ernest ·

      In reply to Xp misreporting Used disk space.

      properly when measuring disk space or showing what’s used.

      1. Recycle Bin

      Windows defaults sets this to 10% of each drive / partition. It sets this space aside and doesn’t allow it to be used. Some parts of Windows will show this as not free and some will show it as not used.

      Clear the bin, then right click, select properties, and adjust the figure from 10% to 1%. You may find you just found a huge amount of space.

      2. System Recovery
      Again this space is set aside by the computer and misreported as above. Again the default is usually something like 10% to 12% of the drive, for most modern drives 1% to 4% is sufficient.

      Go to control panel, system, system recovery, select a drive and adjust the amount set aside, repeat for each drive / partition.

      3. Virtual memory
      The area set aside for use as virtual memory is not available for use to store data and will also be misreported as above.

      Unless you wish to set a specified size, you can’t do much about this and there’s not much point anyway.
      ……….

      Three areas to free up space.

      A. Run a file search for anything ending with the name .tmp – run the search as *.tmp – these are temporary files the system created while working, but Windows is so badly written it rarely cleans up after itself. Watch out though, some will relate to the work being done and won’t be deleted, just make sure to leave it when you get the error message and delete all the others.

      2. As above but look for files that start with ~ these are other temporary files so you run the search as ~*.*

      3. Go to My Computer and right click on the hard drive, select properties and select clean up. Choose the way you wish to clean up the drive – do NOT select the option to compact the drive as this has been known to cause occasional problems.
      ……..
      If you need more space after this, plug in a new drive.

      In the past, using the above six things I’ve often added 30% of the drive to the amount of space available for use.

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