windows 2000 AS showing disk is full when it shouldn't be

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group22

Hi,

I have a Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP4.
Windows is saying the disk was nearly full. (about 32GB used)
The disk is roughly 34GB and I didn't see any large folders or files
on it. If I look at the properties of all folders (including hidden)
the folder sizes add up to about 6GB.
This morning, I ran a utility called i.disk that displays folder size
graphically and it is only showing about 6Gb of disk space used.
I have scanned for viruses and found none.
I scanned for rootkits and it came up clean.
I ran a file system check on boot, that didn't clear it up.

Any ideas as to how to proceed?

Thanks,
Rob
 
group22 said:
Hi,

I have a Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP4.
Windows is saying the disk was nearly full. (about 32GB used)
The disk is roughly 34GB and I didn't see any large folders or files
on it. If I look at the properties of all folders (including hidden)
the folder sizes add up to about 6GB.
This morning, I ran a utility called i.disk that displays folder size
graphically and it is only showing about 6Gb of disk space used.
I have scanned for viruses and found none.
I scanned for rootkits and it came up clean.
I ran a file system check on boot, that didn't clear it up.

Any ideas as to how to proceed?

Thanks,
Rob
Click to expand...

Try one of these tools:
DriveUse:
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/freezip/freeware/index.html
Bullet Proof Folder sizes: http://www.foldersizes.com/
 
I have the same problem on one of my XP machines. On an 80GB drive,
some tools say there's only 3GB left, yet all the tools I've brought
to bear so far say I've only got 40GB of files. I even tried a boot
time chkdsk, but that didn't find or fix anything. I also checked the
number of restore points, and other places where space might hide. No
luck.

I hope someone has an answer!

tbone
 
FYI - DriveUse cranked for about 10 minutes and 350,000 I/Os on this
system without displaying anything. I killed it.

As far as the missing free space - I have this same problem on an XP
machine. I use PowerDesk, which includes a SizeManager utility. This
and other tools showed only 40 of 80GB used, but free space shown by
all tools is only 3GB. I know about clusters and wasted space -
there's no way that can account for this much missing. I checked
system restore points, 0 length files, empty directories... nothing.

I did a boot-time chkdsk, but that didn't help. The only clue I have
so far is that the Defrag tool shows a huge red "fragmented" area on
the hard drive (yes, about half the space), but there aren't enough
files mentioned in the fragmentation report to explain almost 40GB
missing.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks
tbone
 
I have seen this question on countless occasions and in each an
every case a combination of running chkdsk.exe and plus one of
the tools I quoted before resolved the issue. I'm sure it will do it
in your case too.
 
If you send your valid EMail address to
pegasus_fnlATyahooDOTcom then I'll let you
have a command line VB script I wrote that gives
you a complete profile of your hard disk and what's
eating up your disk space.
 
If you send your valid EMail address to
pegasus_fnlATyahooDOTcom then I'll let you
have a command line VB script I wrote that gives
you a complete profile of your hard disk and what's
eating up your disk space.
 
If you send your valid EMail address to
pegasus_fnlATyahooDOTcom then I'll let you
have a command line VB script I wrote that gives
you a complete profile of your hard disk and what's
eating up your disk space.
Click to expand...

Your suggestion pointed me in the right direction, so I thank you for
that mental "kick". :-) I guess that's why you guys get the big bucks!

A while back, I started writing a duplicate file checker in VB
(perhaps someday I'll release it, if I ever get it finished). I
created a File Enumerator class that selects all files matching a list
of filter criteria (files, folders, sizes, even regular expression
match on filename). So I realized that this could do as you suggested
your tool would. I figured I had nothing to lose by trying it. Sure
enough, it found all the files AND all the space used, close to 80GB!

Here's the issue: the tools I used all had trouble handling individual
files that exceed 2^32 (4GB) in size. The actual file size is shown
correctly in PowerDesk's folder view (once I knew where to look), but
the file sizes are not reported or added correctly to the total in the
FileSearch or SizeManager tools. I'll bet the coder ignored the high
32-bits of the filesize in the directory entry. What threw me most is
that the FileSearch tool listed the file size incorrectly. These huge
files are backup volumes created by Acronis TrueImage.

So, THANK YOU for pointing me in the right direction. I relearned that
lesson about not trusting the tools too much.

BTW, what's with that DriveUse program? It has been cranking away on
the XP machine for 20 minutes, still no answer. I'm gonna let it run
overnight if it has to, just to see what it comes up with. By
comparison, my built-in VB-based enumerator (using the Windows API of
course) scanned my entire drive in mere seconds (but it's only looking
at the directory entries).

Thanks very much
tbone
 
tbone said:
Your suggestion pointed me in the right direction, so I thank you for
that mental "kick". :-) I guess that's why you guys get the big bucks!
Click to expand...

I'm a volunteer in this newsgroup, same as the vast
majority of the other respondents. We get no bucks
for our assistance, neither big nor small.
 
Hi,

I used folder sizes and it shows a folder called "del" in the recycler
that is 26GB.
I am unable to delete it from windows.
Should I boot using Bart's PE and delete it?
Thanks,
Rob
 
group22 said:
Hi,

I used folder sizes and it shows a folder called "del" in the recycler
that is 26GB.
I am unable to delete it from windows.
Should I boot using Bart's PE and delete it?
Thanks,
Rob
Click to expand...

The usual method is to right-click the Recycle Bin,
then to empty it.

A Bart PE boot will probably let you delete it too.
 
Sorry, I forgot to mention it wouldn't let me delete it, even from a
command line.
I think I'll try bart's PE.

Can I delete the recycler directory? Will it be regenerated?

Thanks again,
Rob
 
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