Where's my 7GB?

pfpf

my new hard drive is 320GB but is only showing as 298GB in Windows. i understand this to be correct due to techie stuff!!?

i had formated/put in a clean OS install so i know all that is on the HD is what i have put on.

when i right click on the HD it says "total space used 12.8GB" but when i check the total used on the HD by opening "C" and dragging a box around everything (inc. hidden files) it gives a total used space of 5.7GB..

so i am missing 7.1GB?

any help/suggestions?

thank you.

p.s i can't be 100% sure but i think the big increase in used/missing space was after i put SP2 in. my OS is XP home SP1.

K9ine

pfpf wrote: »

my new hard drive is 320GB but is only showing as 298GB in Windows. i understand this to be correct due to techie stuff!!?

Correct, computers use binary to work :eek:. Eight binary digits (bits) equal a byte and most computers manipulate bytes for everything. (32 bit computers work with 4 bytes and 64 bit computers work with 8 bytes.) Therefore computers store everything in memory as multiples of the 8 bit byte and a computer kilobyte was decided to be 1024 bytes (2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2).

Hard drive manufacturers took advantage of kilo actually meaning 1000 to make their drives seem larger. I.e. 320GB = 320,000,000,000 Bytes.
The computer divides this by 1024 each time thus:
320,000,000,000 = 312,500,000 kB = 305,176 MB = 298 GB :T

Recently the traditional computer kilobyte of 1024 bytes was named kibibyte (a contraction of kilo binary byte). 320GB = 298 GiB (Gibibytes). Unfortunatly nobody's told this to the computers

pfpf wrote: »

when i right click on the HD it says "total space used 12.8GB" but when i check the total used on the HD by opening "C" and dragging a box around everything (inc. hidden files) it gives a total used space of 5.7GB..
so i am missing 7.1GB?

The right click includes all items whereas the 'dragging a box around' does NOT include items INSIDE the sub-folders (even though the subfolder is highlighted).

You could 'drag a box around', then right click selection, then choose properties to give more details on space used. It should show you the size of all files, and the space used (see below), and the number of files and folders. You can also right click and choose properties on a single folder.

Instead of dragging a box around you could use Edit, Select All (or Ctrl+A).

The size of all files differs to the actual space used because the computer uses whole segments of a hard disk to store files. Eg a 5kB file will use 32kb and a 40kb file will use 64kb IF the smallest segment is 32kb. Segment sizes get larger as hard drive sizes increase. It's analogous to a paper card index system, a whole card will be used whether it has one line of text or many more.

A lovely useful and mesmerising free tool called WinDirStat is available to download that shows a content of hard drives in beautiful detail. It's an opensource sourceforge project available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/windirstat/


I would also probably recommend partitioning the drive into two or three smaller drives (One for OS and programs, one for Documents, and a third for backup and extras) but you need to thoroughly understand the repartition software before you undertake such a task.

K9ine :cool:

superscaper

K9ine wrote: »

Recently the traditional computer kilobyte of 1024 bytes was named kibibyte (a contraction of kilo binary byte). 320GB = 298 GiB (Gibibytes). Unfortunatly nobody's told this to the computers

I hope you stick around, I don't want to be the only one who uses the proper binary prefixes.

tomsolomon

Dam and I gotta learn all this stuff at college :EasterBun
Great stuff....

pfpf

wow, plenty of info there K9ine. thanks.

i pretty much understand it all, but i feel there is something more to it.

last night i started from scratch and reinstalled XP....at each stage of adding more software i tracked HD usage.

before i installed SP2 i had used 3GB on HD space, on installing SP2 it jumped to 11GB+.

SP2 cannot be 8GB+?

i run the piece of software you linked to and it only found what i had found anyway...so we are back to square 1, "wheres my 7GB?"

thanks.

edit: what i was thinking was, when i have run updater and it adds new files (inc. SP2) is it storing the install/setup files or something like that but then not deleting once complete?

there is defineteley too much HD useage for what i have installed.

John_Gray

Download and install something like TreeSize Free, and run it.

Check for things like the Recycle Bin and System Volume Information, which don't readily show up elsewhere. You can drill down into other directories, sort by name or directory size, etc.

pfpf

thanks.

this is doing my head in now....maybe i need to explain better.

New Dell PC with 320GB hard drive. came with Vista preinstalled but i only bought it with Vista so i could use it later, for now i am using XP.

it also came with a small 10GB partition with the recovery software on, which, and this is where i believe my issue may lay, i deleted to make 1 large HD.

so i clean install XP which is an old original of mine with SP1.

when i have installed XP but before any updates my HD usage is 3GB of the available 298GB (i understand why it is isnt 320GB, this is not the problem).

so now reads, available space 298GB, used 2.99GB. which is spot on for a 320GB HD.

when i then update XP all is fine until i install SP2 which then pushes used space to around 12GB when i right click C drive and properties, but when i check actual content of drive C using any of the above suggested software or normal means then the usage is acually 7-8GB less, meaning i have lost this space.

to make things more complicated i have just installed XP on my old PC and total HD usage after installing SP2 is around 5.5GB when i right click C which is how i expected it to be.

so in summary, its only once i have installed SP2 on my new PC that i seem to lose 7-8GB of sapce.

thanks again and a pint for anyone who feeds me the vital info

K9ine

pfpf wrote: »

edit: what i was thinking was, when i have run updater and it adds new files (inc. SP2) is it storing the install/setup files or something like that but then not deleting once complete?

I think the service packs are stored somewhere but like you say I don't think they should add up to 8GB+!

I'm afraid I'm still using Win98SE and know little of XP and it's service packs.

It may be the swap file? (I know little of swap files etc)

WinDirStat can calculate unknown disk use by pressing F7 and looking for <Unknown> or a big yellow square.
In WinDirStat help I found this:
"On my XP WinDirStat shows more than a GB <Unknown>, what's wrong?
Nothing. XP quite often creates rather big 'System restore points' under C:\System Volume Information, but denies access to it."

Run WinDirStat and look for the size of your <Unknown>. If it's 8ish GB then I guess SP2 has created a very-very large restore point. But this does not explain it being fine on the other computer... unless it's because the hard drive is so much bigger and it's due to large sector sizes.

Sorry I a little vague in this area,

K9ine

pfpf

K9ine wrote: »

WinDirStat can calculate unknown disk use by pressing F7 and looking for <Unknown> or a big yellow square.
In WinDirStat help I found this:
"On my XP WinDirStat shows more than a GB <Unknown>, what's wrong?
Nothing. XP quite often creates rather big 'System restore points' under C:\System Volume Information, but denies access to it."

spot on m8.....it finds a "unknown" 8.1GB so i guess thats where it is!

if its simply a backup, is there a way of deleting it, or is it more than a backup?

thing is, on my old PC i have set it up just the same and its only 1GB.

thanks for all your help.

pfpf.

pfpf

success found it :j

simple in the end, but being a non techie i am rather pleased that i actually found it on my ownsome.

i got to thinking about your last post K9ine and did a bit of looking around the C drive...eventually i went to...

START/PROGRAMS/ACCESSORIES/SYSTEM TOOLS/SYSTEM RESTORE

then i clicked on settings and found there was an option as to how much space to allocate to the resore feature, mine was a massive 12% of max HD space, 30GB.

i simply reduced this figure and all my space is now usable i have never actually used the restore option in my PC life as i backup all my valuable stuff on another drive regularly.

hope this thread helps others in the future, just need a better title....i will have a think and rename it something more appropriate.

thanks again k9ine, you set the ball rolling and my brain ticking

K9ine

Congratulations and well done,

Glad you found it. I was speaking to a friend today, he uses xp but he is not very techie. He said the Windows-Restore has two main processes and it is the 'indexing' system that creates the most files but you can switch this part off in the options somehow and also delete earlier restore points such as the restore point before you installed sp2.

Best wishes, K9ine.