Hard disk drive missing space??

[corpor8chic]

Hello there,

Something is very strange with my PC..

I had World of Warcraft on and noticed it kept having extreme lag spikes so I updated the Video Card..and still kept having the same issue. So then I checked the memory and noticed of my 320gb only like 87gb were free..Which i thought was odd normally there is well over 100gb. So then I thought with the new expansion of WOW that it must be just taking up a lot of extra space. So to get ready for the new expansion, and I wanted to my other games back to my pc Aion, Sims 3, Dragon Age.. So, I went out and bought an external hard drive and moved all my music files over and image files I'm a webdesigner so I have many image files.

After I moved and deleted everything I could find.. and also removed other game files I was back to just barely over 100 GB..and the game stopped being so choppy so I was happy. Then this morning I wake up and check my drive space and I have just 47.4 GB free!!

I also use carbonite to back up my files but this is only supposed to be online storage..it shouldnt effect my hard drive right? Anyway, I would truly appreciate any insight into this issue. As I'm about to just wipe everything and start all over..but then I am not even sure that would solve whatever the problem is.

System Specs are:

OS Name Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium
Version 6.0.6002 Service Pack 2 Build 6002
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name MONEY-PC
System Manufacturer HP-Pavilion
System Model GN709AA-aba a6257c
System Type X86-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E4500 @ 2.20GHz, 2200 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies, LTD 5.23, 10/30/2007
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.0.6002.18005"
User Name Money-PC\baby
Time Zone Central Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 3.50 GB
Available Physical Memory 1.45 GB
Total Virtual Memory 7.20 GB
Available Virtual Memory 5.15 GB
Page File Space 3.79 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
Video Driver is : Nvidia Geforce 9500 GT

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi there,

Need to be more explicit as to your computer specs, CPU, RAM type and amount, HDD etc. so we can best understand your problem and give you the best solution.

I am assuming you are talking about your HDD, rather than memory RAM that is filling up.

There can be several causes, from a virus, to Recycle bin files, to Norton protected erased files, to temporary internet Cache files. The best way to see what is taking up HDD space is to use a utility developed to do just that, like free Windirstat, which you can check out at http://windirstat.info/.

It shows you what programs are hogging your HDD space and in a nice graphical format. Then you can decide how best to organize it or clean it up.

The jerkiness you mentioned is usually due to inadequate video RAM or system RAM, where the OS has to swap out pages of data to the HDD in order to have adequate RAM for the process it is running.

You are right, wiping out everything doesn't solve the problem, which will just show up again if you don't identify it first and take corrective steps.

 

[corpor8chic]

Hi there John,

Thank you thank you for your response!

Yes I meant my hard disk drive. I used the program you suggested and it says I have only used 85 GB on My Computer..I see also that when I select in the options show free space it shows only 45.5 GB free but also lists unknown as 170.7 GB..I think this maybe where my issue lies..whatever these unknown files may be.

However when I go to Computer C: Properties it shows I have used 242 GB of 289 GB capacity..I have done drive clean up ..and I do use norton 360..I run it constantly because of gaming online and the constant threat of hackers.

So my issue is I am not seeing the other 200GB on my hard disc drive.

How might I get you the other information you need?

Thank you so very much!

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi there John,

Thank you thank you for your response!

Yes I meant my hard disk drive. I used the program you suggested and it says I have only used 85 GB on My Computer..I see also that when I select in the options show free space it shows only 45.5 GB free but also lists unknown as 170.7 GB..I think this maybe where my issue lies..whatever these unknown files may be.

However when I go to Computer C: Properties it shows I have used 242 GB of 289 GB capacity..I have done drive clean up ..and I do use norton 360..I run it constantly because of gaming online and the constant threat of hackers.

So my issue is I am not seeing the other 200GB on my hard disc drive.

How might I get you the other information you need?

Thank you so very much!

Hi again,

Norton has a way of storing protected deleted files, and possibly repeated backUp 360s it could be doing automatically. Check to see if you are running Norton Protected Recycle Bin. R click on the recycle bin and see if there are a bunch of files stored away there. Files you delete can just get moved to this area without freeing up space. Also check the size of backUps Norton may be doing on this drive. Do you have another HDD connected to your desktop where the backUp are stored, or are they being stored on this volume also?

The more mechanical and sometimes time consumming way to find files, is to R click on your Documents, Programs, Pictures, etc folders and see how much space is being used by each one. All of a sudden you will find the culprit with an additional 170GB of files. That's a huge amount of space to be "unknown" and I suspect it's in the Norton 360 backups.
See what you can find

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi again,

Thanks for all the specs on your computer. Helps a lot. I'm assuming you have just 1 HDD on your laptop?

Go to Disk Management, and in the lower section, look at the graphic layout of your HDD. It should say Disk 0 Basic, Online.
See if you have 2 or 3 Partitions created on this Disk, on the right. Probably a "reserved" system partition HP placed there as a Restore feature, to get you back to square 1. Check the size. Then you should have your C: volume which should say NTFS, Healthy, System . Also possibly Symantec placed another Partition there for the backups. If so, it should list the "Friendly Name" Drive letter, NTFS, and Healthy, or Healthy Unknown if they don't want you changing it. Check the size also.

See if they add up to your full HDD drive, or pretty close not counting overhead.

John

 

[corpor8chic]

Well just to update this thread..


Thank you John, I did what you said but I still couldnt identify where the issue was.


So, I finally after hours of trying to figure out the mystery just did a system recovery..Which the last time I did this was about a year ago. I uninstalled all the extra's that the manufacturer include ..but then I really wanted to make sure I dont have this issue again so I did A LOT more research and found this thread...

http://forums.cnet.com/7723-12546_102-502849.html?tag=threadListing;forum-threads

which then lead me to this thread

http://forums.cnet.com/7723-12546_102-238817.html?tag=posts;msg5012673

So I did as the thread instructed and downloaded treesize..which shows me where every penny of my hard earned disk space is going..and there is a free trial but I think it will probably be worth it to invest in the home version..I hope this thread helps someone.

Thank you again so much!

 

[John_VanKirk]

Well just to update this thread..


Thank you John, I did what you said but I still couldnt identify where the issue was.


So, I finally after hours of trying to figure out the mystery just did a system recovery..Which the last time I did this was about a year ago. I uninstalled all the extra's that the manufacturer include ..but then I really wanted to make sure I dont have this issue again so I did A LOT more research and found this thread...

http://forums.cnet.com/7723-12546_102-502849.html?tag=threadListing;forum-threads

which then lead me to this thread

http://forums.cnet.com/7723-12546_102-238817.html?tag=posts;msg5012673

So I did as the thread instructed and downloaded treesize..which shows me where every penny of my hard earned disk space is going..and there is a free trial but I think it will probably be worth it to invest in the home version..I hope this thread helps someone.

Thank you again so much!

Hi again,

You are well on your way to becomming an expert windows sleuth! Identifying a problem, finding the tools you need, fixing it. Nice.
I think since you restored your computer, probably the disappearing disk space is not now an issue, but could be again down the road.

If TreeSize did ID the problem, let us know where that extra spindle space was hiding.

One fair use I try to follow is to try freeware or shareware, and if it helped or solved a problem, then consider purchasing it as a "thank you" to the developers who made that possible. The TreeSize personal edition $24.95 for a perpetual license seems fair - the professional choice is unreasonable. Use it a few times to become expert in its functions, then put it in your "toolkit". And that way, you have become the expert, feeling good you could help the next person when that problem pops up again, as they always do.

Congrats.