Ive lost 11.5GB

brodev

If, when using windows explorer, I display the contents of my C drive and then right click the "windows" folder and then click properties I am told that it contains 22GB.
If I open my windows folder then "select all" and right click this and properties I get 10.5 GB. I am using XP media centre. Anybody any ideas where the 11.5GB has gone?

GunJack

have you got your HDD partitioned ?? what size should your HDD be ?? When was the last time you did a clearout of temp carp ??

[Deleted User]

Have you set Explorer to show Hidden Files and Folders?

brodev

GunJack wrote: »

have you got your HDD partitioned ?? what size should your HDD be ?? When was the last time you did a clearout of temp carp ??

HDD not partitioned and is 50GB
Clearout done regularly ,last time yesterday

kwikbreaks

I see similar results.

When you ask windows to work out the size of all of your files with select all / properties it counts the actual file size of each file and shows you the total but a file can easily occupy more space on disk than the number of bytes in it - the data is stored on disk as sectors of a fixed size (how big that fixed size is depends on how the disk was formatted but with NTFS is usually 4kb) If you have a file that is 9kb in size it will need 3 x 4kb sectors to store it so there is space wasted.

Additionally some more space is used by the filesystem to keep track of exactly where the files are stored on the disk.

When you just look at the disk properties it shows how many sectors are occupied and how many are free.

Given that you appear to have "lost" about half the disk you either have a lot of small files or the sector size could be more than 4kb

If you show properties of a single file it should tell you size plus size on disk.

brodev

anewhope wrote: »

Have you set Explorer to show Hidden Files and Folders?

I thought I had but I did not. It took half an hour to set the attributes but there is no difference

BritRael

brodev wrote: »

I thought I had but I did not. It took half an hour to set the attributes but there is no difference

You do not have to change any files' attributes.

Open windows explorer, click 'tools', click 'folder options', click the 'view' tab, select 'show hidden files and folders'. This will take half a minute if you take your time.

brodev

BritRael wrote: »

You do not have to change any files' attributes.

Open windows explorer, click 'tools', click 'folder options', click the 'view' tab, select 'show hidden files and folders'. This will take half a minute if you take your time.

"show hidden files and folders" was and is ticked

hotkee

there is two lots of hidden files you have to unhide in windows explorer

"the hidden files and folders"

and

"the system hidden files and folders"

jackthenipper

brodev wrote: »

If, when using windows explorer, I display the contents of my C drive and then right click the "windows" folder and then click properties I am told that it contains 22GB.
If I open my windows folder then "select all" and right click this and properties I get 10.5 GB. I am using XP media centre. Anybody any ideas where the 11.5GB has gone?

Have you reinstalled windaws at all?

[Deleted User]

The 22GB figure is going to include hard links (which are just links to the actual file but are reported as having the same file size as what it is linking to). An especially large contributor to this is the winsxs directory within Windows, although it's not exclusively made up of hard links.

System Restore also reserves a portion of the space on the volume for restore points. You could be noticing a difference due to that, if you have SR enabled.