Hi, Alan.
Open an Administrator:Command Prompt window. (Run cmd.exe as
Administrator.) This will help you look behind the GUI to see what is going
on back there. Of course, like any other powerful technique, it can do at
least as much harm as good it you're not familiar with it, so be careful.
Many of us cut our computer teeth on (or before) MS-DOS, so these are second
nature to us, so we may forget to mention some obvious(?) steps; if you have
questions, just ask.
Type Dir C:\ /s/a - and then get a cup of coffee. On a big drive with lots
of files, this could take a half-hour or more! To interrupt it, press
Pause/Break, or Ctrl+C, which is the old version of the same thing. In
Vista, the Command Prompt window is scrollable, so use the scroll bar to see
a lot (but maybe not all) of the contents that scrolled by so quickly.
The Dir (directory) command lists the contents of the specified directory
(former name for what is not called a folder). By specifying C:\, we are
starting in the Root ("/") of Drive C:. The /s switch lists all subfolders
and their contents; the /a shows all files, even those with Hidden and
System attributes. Type Dir /? to see a mini-Help file showing all the
switches and parameters available.
Now that you've seen more than you wanted to <g>, it's time to narrow it
down a bit.
First: Dir C:\ /a - just remove the /s and see all the files in the Root.
Two files you should probably see are hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys, each
about as big as your installed RAM. Hiberfil.sys is your hibernation file;
until you disable hibernation, it can't be deleted or moved from C:\.
Pagefile.sys is your paging file; this can be moved to another drive; if you
need instructions, just ask.
Second: I'm not sure what comes second, because I can't see your computer.
And I know that you've already done some of the things that I would suggest
and that Ronnie has advised. But you can go exploring a piece at a time by
adding parameters to the Dir command: Dir C:\Temp /s/a When you find
something that you are SURE you don't need, you can delete it. And if you
find something that shows up WITH /a, but not without that parameter, then
you can be pretty sure that it is part of your unexplained or "invisible" 19
GB.
A partial explanation, which can sometimes have more impact than we expect,
is "slack space". As you probably know, a single-byte file uses a whole
"cluster" or allocation unit for storage. The default cluster in NTFS is 4
KB, so 1,000 single-byte files would use 4,000 KB (4 MB), even though a
listing would show only 1,000 bytes used. Actually, NTFS is smarter than
this, but the general idea is still valid. The point is that small files
use much more storage space than just the number of bytes reported by Dir.
If your WLM mail store is on C: (and it is, by default), then there may be
thousands of .eml and .nws files - mostly smaller than 4 KB each - creating
just this situation.
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta 2 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 beta v.275)
