disk seems to have only 1/2 the stuff its size says

  • Thread starter Thread starter Beemer Biker
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Beemer Biker

Got XP Pro computer in from son. Not sure what is going on. Properties
says the disk has 109gb free out of a total size of 149. That comes to 40gb
of stuff. I cannot account for it. Highlighting all the NTFS "C:" drive
shows only 18gb actual in files . There is a 1gb swap file and that Volumn
directory that I cant explorer .

I got rid of all restore points and rebooted. That dropped it down to the
above but did not get rid of 20.0 gb of unaccounted for files or "dark
matter" Checkdisk shows no problems on this uncompressed 149gb SATA drive.
Got rid of that temp directory in "local settings" . There are 300mb of
office setup files that I dont want to delete. Dir/h showed that swap file
and the System Volumn directory that I cant access.

Is there anything else I can do to find where the 20gb+ of stuff is?
Something is not right and it needs to be fixed before we upgrade to vista
home premium.
 
Beemer said:
Got XP Pro computer in from son. Not sure what is going on. Properties
says the disk has 109gb free out of a total size of 149. That comes to 40gb
of stuff. I cannot account for it. Highlighting all the NTFS "C:" drive
shows only 18gb actual in files . There is a 1gb swap file and that Volumn
directory that I cant explorer .

I got rid of all restore points and rebooted. That dropped it down to the
above but did not get rid of 20.0 gb of unaccounted for files or "dark
matter" Checkdisk shows no problems on this uncompressed 149gb SATA drive.
Got rid of that temp directory in "local settings" . There are 300mb of
office setup files that I dont want to delete. Dir/h showed that swap file
and the System Volumn directory that I cant access.

Is there anything else I can do to find where the 20gb+ of stuff is?
Something is not right and it needs to be fixed before we upgrade to vista
home premium.
Click to expand...
Microsoft has always believed "all your machines are belong to us." I
imagine that's who is holding the rest hostage.
 
Previously Beemer Biker said:
Got XP Pro computer in from son. Not sure what is going on. Properties
says the disk has 109gb free out of a total size of 149. That comes to 40gb
of stuff. I cannot account for it. Highlighting all the NTFS "C:" drive
shows only 18gb actual in files . There is a 1gb swap file and that Volumn
directory that I cant explorer .
Click to expand...
I got rid of all restore points and rebooted. That dropped it down to the
above but did not get rid of 20.0 gb of unaccounted for files or "dark
matter" Checkdisk shows no problems on this uncompressed 149gb SATA drive.
Got rid of that temp directory in "local settings" . There are 300mb of
office setup files that I dont want to delete. Dir/h showed that swap file
and the System Volumn directory that I cant access.
Click to expand...
Is there anything else I can do to find where the 20gb+ of stuff is?
Something is not right and it needs to be fixed before we upgrade to vista
home premium.
Click to expand...

Disk space is organized in clusters, for example 4kB in size. The
unused space in tha last cluster is lost in most filesystems, since it
is not too effective and difficult to use it. In fact the only one I
know that does not loose it is RaiserFS.

With larger partitions, the clusters get larger. It is one reason to
partition disks. Now a 149GB single partition set-up would have 64kB
cluster size. 20GB of lost space on average happen with 625'000
files.

An other possibility is lost space due to filesystem problems. MS
filesystems are by far the worst in the industry and tend to have
all sorts of problems, including lost clusters. If the 625k file
number is not realistic, try running a full filesystem check.

Arno
 
Got XP Pro computer in from son. Not sure what is going on. Properties
says the disk has 109gb free out of a total size of 149. That comes to 40gb
of stuff. I cannot account for it. Highlighting all the NTFS "C:" drive
shows only 18gb actual in files . There is a 1gb swap file and that Volumn
directory that I cant explorer .

I got rid of all restore points and rebooted. That dropped it down to the
above but did not get rid of 20.0 gb of unaccounted for files or "dark
matter" Checkdisk shows no problems on this uncompressed 149gb SATA drive.
Got rid of that temp directory in "local settings" . There are 300mb of
office setup files that I dont want to delete. Dir/h showed that swap file
and the System Volumn directory that I cant access.

Is there anything else I can do to find where the 20gb+ of stuff is?
Something is not right and it needs to be fixed before we upgrade to vista
home premium.
Click to expand...

That System Volume Information folder contains all the Restore Point
information. It can take up a lot of space. You can either add your
account to the security profile for that folder so you can see how much is
in there, or just disable System Restore and it will purge the folder.

I wouldn't install Vista however. It's too clunky and slow. Maybe if
there were some kickass program that would only run under Vista, but even
then I'd think twice.
 
That System Volume Information folder contains all the Restore Point
information. It can take up a lot of space. You can either add your
account to the security profile for that folder so you can see how much is
in there, or just disable System Restore and it will purge the folder.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't install Vista however. It's too clunky and slow. Maybe if
there were some kickass program that would only run under Vista, but even
then I'd think twice.
Click to expand...

Good advice. Frankly I don't see efven many games running significanlty
better with Vista. The only ones will be these actually being paid for
by Microsoft. HALO 2 comes to mind. However I found HALO repertitive
and boring rnough after a reasonable start, that I stopped playing it
after seeing the 500th reandomly generated room. To likely HALO 2 is a
waste of time.

All the other games want to target a large market share. Hopefully
this DX10 nonsense will make even more game companies move to OpenGL,
were they are not anymore dependent on the MS fad of the year
and can easily port their stuff to other platforms.

As to Vista in general, it seems the MS business model of
dragging out upgrading Windows to the standards of the
other OSes around has finally run its course with XP. Vista
is either unsuitable for an application or not worth the
upgrade from XP. A pity MS can drop selling XP.

Arno
 
Arno said:
Disk space is organized in clusters, for example 4kB in size. The
unused space in tha last cluster is lost in most filesystems, since it
is not too effective and difficult to use it. In fact the only one I
know that does not loose it is RaiserFS.

With larger partitions, the clusters get larger. It is one reason to
partition disks. Now a 149GB single partition set-up would have 64kB
cluster size. 20GB of lost space on average happen with 625'000
files.
Click to expand...

That huge cluster size would only occur if the HD is formated with FAT32,
which is unlikely. With the NTFS filesystem (far more likely with any
PC that shipped with XP PRO), the cluster size would still be 4KB, so
20GB of missing space would mean roughly 10,000,000 files. Nah.
 
That huge cluster size would only occur if the HD is formated with FAT32,
which is unlikely. With the NTFS filesystem (far more likely with any
PC that shipped with XP PRO), the cluster size would still be 4KB, so
20GB of missing space would mean roughly 10,000,000 files. Nah.
Click to expand...

Hmm. Seems I found incorrect information on the web....

Arno
 
Arno Wagner said:
Good advice. Frankly I don't see efven many games running
significanlty better with Vista. The only ones will be these actually
being paid for by Microsoft. HALO 2 comes to mind. However I found
HALO repertitive and boring rnough after a reasonable start, that I
stopped playing it after seeing the 500th reandomly generated room.
To likely HALO 2 is a waste of time.

All the other games want to target a large market share. Hopefully
this DX10 nonsense will make even more game companies move to OpenGL,
were they are not anymore dependent on the MS fad of the year
and can easily port their stuff to other platforms.

As to Vista in general, it seems the MS business model of
dragging out upgrading Windows to the standards of the
other OSes around has finally run its course with XP. Vista
is either unsuitable for an application or not worth the
upgrade from XP. A pity MS can drop selling XP.
Click to expand...

The same mindless claim was made when XP showed up replacing 2K too.
 
Got XP Pro computer in from son.
Click to expand...
[snip]

"from son" = "has had heaven knows what software running on it". The
machine might be trojaned with some bot serving data.
Is there anything else I can do to find where the 20gb+ of stuff is?
Something is not right and it needs to be fixed before we upgrade to vista
home premium.
Click to expand...

I'd use something like dban to wipe the drive. Then I'd check the
HPA, and use something to wipe that too. Then I'd use dban again.
Finally, I'd re-install the OS, from a clean source.
 
Hmm.
Click to expand...

I told you before that you should do something about that humming in
your head. It's not healthy.
Seems I found incorrect information on the web....
Click to expand...

That cobweb that you take for your brain, babblebot?
Maybe the wind was blowing through it, causing that hum.
 
Arno Wagner said:
With larger partitions, the clusters get larger. It is one reason to
partition disks. Now a 149GB single partition set-up would have 64kB
cluster size. 20GB of lost space on average happen with 625'000
files.
Click to expand...

Don't know about your disks, but my 750 GB disk has 4 KB clusters. This is
default for NTFS volumes up to 2 TB.
 
Don't know about your disks, but my 750 GB disk has 4 KB clusters. This is
default for NTFS volumes up to 2 TB.
Click to expand...

I don't use NTFS. Too unstable and not interoperable. I looked this
up on the web, but aparently got wrong information.

Arno
 
Have a look at the details. Some are similar, but many are not.
Click to expand...

Irrelevant to whether the same mindless claim was made when XP showed up replacing 2K too.
 
Irrelevant to whether the same mindless claim was made when XP
showed up replacing 2K too.
Click to expand...

Look up the semantics of ''irrelevant''. You seem not to understand
it.
 
Arno Wagner said:
I don't use NTFS. Too unstable and not interoperable. I looked this
up on the web, but aparently got wrong information.

Arno
Click to expand...

Never had any stability problems with NTFS. Even with unstable memory. Its
transactional design helps, unlike FAT-based systems which are too easy to
corrupt.
 
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