[dannyyboii]

A weird thing is going on with my uncle's laptop (Lenovo 3000 N100). It has an 80GB HDD. So it recognizes 70-something GB. Approximately 5GB is used for recovery stuff. So the total capacity it shows for the C drive (the only partition) is about 69.6GB. At the moment it is showing that about 58.8GB full and 10.8GB empty. However, I can't find anything that adds up to that amount. Max is around 25-30GB.

When I right-click the drive and got to properties, that's the information I see. I checked for hidden folders if possible, but there doesn't seem to be anything. I went into the C drive and selected everything and checked the total capacity by right-clicking and going to properties. The total was 20 something GB. What can be happening?

Edit

See the problem?
It's saying that I'm only using about 19GB but it's a different story in Windows.

 

[SZayat]

Try TreeSize, It will analyze each folder to know what size & what percentage does the files take.

And regarding Lenovo's recovery tools; they are very useful. I advice to keep them.

Cheers

 

[dannyyboii]

Will do. Running chkdsk at the moment.

 

[dannyyboii]

See the problem?
It's saying that I'm only using about 19GB but it's a different story in Windows.

 

[cisf0rcalvin]

uh...try page file? thats the only thing I can think of =/

 

[dannyyboii]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cisf0rcalvin uh...try page file? thats the only thing I can think of =/

Checked, not it.

 

[SZayat]

could you attach TreeSize report?

 

[iampoor]

THats COMPLETLY normal.

Since a manufacterors mesure megabutes as 1000 kilo bytes (which is by our definition 1,024) drives never show up there actuall size

Most 250gb drives show up as 232gb

 

[FearSC549]

It's those HDD manufactures...

 

[dannyyboii]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SZayat could you attach TreeSize report?

How can I do that? I only see a print report option.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iampoor THats COMPLETLY normal. Since a manufacterors mesure megabutes as 1000 kilo bytes (which is by our definition 1,024) drives never show up there actuall size Most 250gb drives show up as 232gb

No it's not. I know what you are talking about. You're not getting the point. It's a 80GB drive so we all know it contains approx 70 something MB. That is what you are talking about, but irrelevant.

The problem is that Windows is showing that I am using 50GB+ of space and have about 18GB empty. However according to TreeSize, I am only using about 19GB. Which is accurate if I add up all the files. So I have no idea what is going on or what can be taking up all the other gigs?

 

[iampoor]

virus?

Have you scanned your system yet?

 

[dannyyboii]

Quote:

Originally Posted by iampoor virus? Have you scanned your system yet?

Working on it.

This is one of those erratic and unheard-of type of things. It's not even my computer, so who knows what has been going on. My last option will be reformat or some kind of recovery.

 

[SZayat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dannyyboii How can I do that? I only see a print report option.

Print the report on a PDF Printer. & Try to clean all temp files using CCleaner.

 

[charbs152]

maybe its your system restore...by default it uses 12% of the drive

i usually set mine to about 1GB on my OS drive

 

[SZayat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by charbs152 maybe its your system restore...by default it uses 12% of the drive i usually set mine to about 1GB on my OS drive

You've got a point

 

[gonX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by charbs152 maybe its your system restore...by default it uses 12% of the drive i usually set mine to about 1GB on my OS drive

It IS system restore or something else. Go disable and reenable it.. it should clear up everything. It resides in the System Volume Information folder, hence why it should matter

 

[dannyyboii]

Weird. System Restore has always been about 2% (1.8GB). So that can't be it. however, I will try to disable and re-enable it to see that will happen. BTW, just to let everyone know, page file is set to approx 1GB. So that is also not it.
WTH is going on..My last two steps will be to contact Lenovo or reinstalling XP to see if there is a change.

 

[whe3ls]

have you removed temp files cookies and ran a disk cleanup dont know if you have

 

[dannyyboii]

Quote:

Originally Posted by whe3ls have you removed temp files cookies and ran a disk cleanup dont know if you have

Yes I have.

 

[RulerOf]

I've got a guess: Cluster size.

Try this: Navigate to the root of the drive and highlight all of the files and folders, and then right click something and click properties. It'll do an inventory of the drive and give you something like this:

Notice the difference between the "Size" and the "Size on Disk." They're incredibly different, by several orders of magnitude, because of a fundamental property of file systems. What happens is that file systems divide a disk up into chunks, NTFS usually does 4kb chunks, or "clusters." Every file that is written to the disk begins at the start of a cluster, and ends either before it fills the cluster (for files smaller than 4k) or in the middle of another cluster (for files larger than 4k). Either way, this imposes a minimum limit on file size, regardless of how much data the file actually contains, because while one file can occupy many clusters, many files cannot occupy one cluster.

The way I created this anomaly was by typing the word "Stuff" into a text document, and copying it about a thousand times. Altogether, it's only 6k of data, but it still consumes over 4 megs on the disk.

So highlight the files and get a count that way, don't just look at Windows' report of the disk, and see if it offers more information. This could be caused by a bunch of little log files, or something of the like.

Furthermore, but you've probably tried it, chkdsk and defrag won't hurt.

Good Luck.