USB Thumb Drive & Free Space

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim Haselmaier
  • Start date Start date
J

Jim Haselmaier

[If this is a well-known problem I apologize. I've searched the boards
and can't seem to find this problem......]

I have an el-cheapo 64MB thumb drive purchased off eBay. (This fact,
I realize, might be the answer to the issue......)]

When files are deleted I don't recover all available space. To prove my
point
I formatted the drive. WinXP (Home) showed 60+MB available. I copied
32MB of data onto the drive. Then deleted all the data. WinXP then showed
52MB available and 8MB used. There were no files/folders visible in
Explorer.
(View/Options is set to show all files.)

Anyone know why this is happening?

Thanks.

jim(@)acceleratedinsight.com
 
What format did you give the drive? If you formatted it to NTFS the missing
space will be taken up in system administration area and won't be available
(I don't know if this can be done as a NTFS format on a thumb drive as I
haven't tried it).

Turn on view hidden files and turn on view system files and see if anything
is hidden from view. (Click on View menu in Windows Explorer, Make sure
"Show hidden files and folders" has a dot in the circle and 2 lines lower in
the list "Hide protected operating system files" has no check mark in the
box).
 
Thanks for the suggestions.

I set Explorer to show OS files, or whatever the right term is.

There is a 'System Volume Information' folder which contains a 'catalog.wci'
folder. This folder appears to be growing - its up to 24MB.

Anyone know what this is and what its doing?

Thanks.

Jim


LVTravel said:
What format did you give the drive? If you formatted it to NTFS the missing
space will be taken up in system administration area and won't be available
(I don't know if this can be done as a NTFS format on a thumb drive as I
haven't tried it).

Turn on view hidden files and turn on view system files and see if anything
is hidden from view. (Click on View menu in Windows Explorer, Make sure
"Show hidden files and folders" has a dot in the circle and 2 lines lower in
the list "Hide protected operating system files" has no check mark in the
box).


Jim Haselmaier said:
[If this is a well-known problem I apologize. I've searched the boards
and can't seem to find this problem......]

I have an el-cheapo 64MB thumb drive purchased off eBay. (This fact,
I realize, might be the answer to the issue......)]

When files are deleted I don't recover all available space. To prove my
point
I formatted the drive. WinXP (Home) showed 60+MB available. I copied
32MB of data onto the drive. Then deleted all the data. WinXP then showed
52MB available and 8MB used. There were no files/folders visible in
Explorer.
(View/Options is set to show all files.)

Anyone know why this is happening?

Thanks.

jim(@)acceleratedinsight.com
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Turn off indexing service for the drive. Right click on the drive icon in
Windows Explorer. Left click on Properties. At the bottom of the window
should be Indexing service. Remove checkbox.


Jim Haselmaier said:
Thanks for the suggestions.

I set Explorer to show OS files, or whatever the right term is.

There is a 'System Volume Information' folder which contains a 'catalog.wci'
folder. This folder appears to be growing - its up to 24MB.

Anyone know what this is and what its doing?

Thanks.

Jim


LVTravel said:
What format did you give the drive? If you formatted it to NTFS the missing
space will be taken up in system administration area and won't be available
(I don't know if this can be done as a NTFS format on a thumb drive as I
haven't tried it).

Turn on view hidden files and turn on view system files and see if anything
is hidden from view. (Click on View menu in Windows Explorer, Make sure
"Show hidden files and folders" has a dot in the circle and 2 lines
Click to expand...
lower
in
the list "Hide protected operating system files" has no check mark in the
box).


Jim Haselmaier said:
[If this is a well-known problem I apologize. I've searched the boards
and can't seem to find this problem......]

I have an el-cheapo 64MB thumb drive purchased off eBay. (This fact,
I realize, might be the answer to the issue......)]

When files are deleted I don't recover all available space. To prove my
point
I formatted the drive. WinXP (Home) showed 60+MB available. I copied
32MB of data onto the drive. Then deleted all the data. WinXP then showed
52MB available and 8MB used. There were no files/folders visible in
Explorer.
(View/Options is set to show all files.)

Anyone know why this is happening?

Thanks.

jim(@)acceleratedinsight.com
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Turned off XP's file system indexing service. Deleted the catalog.wci
folder.
Everything behaves as expected.

Now its time to investigate: Do other thumb drives have the same behavior?
Or do "better" drives prevent the indexing service from taking up space?

Jim


LVTravel said:
What format did you give the drive? If you formatted it to NTFS the missing
space will be taken up in system administration area and won't be available
(I don't know if this can be done as a NTFS format on a thumb drive as I
haven't tried it).

Turn on view hidden files and turn on view system files and see if anything
is hidden from view. (Click on View menu in Windows Explorer, Make sure
"Show hidden files and folders" has a dot in the circle and 2 lines lower in
the list "Hide protected operating system files" has no check mark in the
box).


Jim Haselmaier said:
[If this is a well-known problem I apologize. I've searched the boards
and can't seem to find this problem......]

I have an el-cheapo 64MB thumb drive purchased off eBay. (This fact,
I realize, might be the answer to the issue......)]

When files are deleted I don't recover all available space. To prove my
point
I formatted the drive. WinXP (Home) showed 60+MB available. I copied
32MB of data onto the drive. Then deleted all the data. WinXP then showed
52MB available and 8MB used. There were no files/folders visible in
Explorer.
(View/Options is set to show all files.)

Anyone know why this is happening?

Thanks.

jim(@)acceleratedinsight.com
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Jim, I really don't know why this has turned on the indexing system for the
thumb drive. I don't use or own one but I do use a compact flash card
reader connected to my USB ports on my home and work computers and transfer
my data between home and work on 512 MB and 1 GB compact flash cards. (BTW,
this is a much cheaper alternative than a thumb drive.) These when installed
don't show indexing service as an option on the properties window. I can
share them and protect them like a regular hard disk drive but I can't turn
on the indexing service like I can on the regular hard drives (not that I
want to).

Glad my suggestion worked. Have you tried plugging into another computer to
see it indexing service is turned on again? I would like to know.

Jim Haselmaier said:
Turned off XP's file system indexing service. Deleted the catalog.wci
folder.
Everything behaves as expected.

Now its time to investigate: Do other thumb drives have the same behavior?
Or do "better" drives prevent the indexing service from taking up space?

Jim


LVTravel said:
What format did you give the drive? If you formatted it to NTFS the missing
space will be taken up in system administration area and won't be available
(I don't know if this can be done as a NTFS format on a thumb drive as I
haven't tried it).

Turn on view hidden files and turn on view system files and see if anything
is hidden from view. (Click on View menu in Windows Explorer, Make sure
"Show hidden files and folders" has a dot in the circle and 2 lines
Click to expand...
lower
in
the list "Hide protected operating system files" has no check mark in the
box).


Jim Haselmaier said:
[If this is a well-known problem I apologize. I've searched the boards
and can't seem to find this problem......]

I have an el-cheapo 64MB thumb drive purchased off eBay. (This fact,
I realize, might be the answer to the issue......)]

When files are deleted I don't recover all available space. To prove my
point
I formatted the drive. WinXP (Home) showed 60+MB available. I copied
32MB of data onto the drive. Then deleted all the data. WinXP then showed
52MB available and 8MB used. There were no files/folders visible in
Explorer.
(View/Options is set to show all files.)

Anyone know why this is happening?

Thanks.

jim(@)acceleratedinsight.com
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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