# 100GB missing from my HDD



## Deleted member 38767 (Sep 17, 2008)

I think it Vista has some problem with my 320GB Seagate. I've noticed yesterday there are just around 50 GB of free space of of 298 that the OS finds. Disk Cleanup free some 1 or 2 GBs. I made some simple maths and there were ~150GB of data on the drive. Where could those 100GB be?


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## dnihilist (Sep 17, 2008)

a. what is the size of the swap file
b. how many percent of disk space is allocated to the recycle bin
c. is hibernation enabled


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## GREASEMONKEY (Sep 17, 2008)

clear out system restore points.


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## r9 (Sep 17, 2008)

Run some software like scandisk or chkdsk /r from repair console from winXP CD there maybe lost files taking hdd space who do not exists in filenames.


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## Deleted member 38767 (Sep 17, 2008)

dnihilist said:


> a. what is the size of the swap file
> b. how many percent of disk space is allocated to the recycle bin
> c. is hibernation enabled



It's not the system drive. I use it for storage and game installs only.



			
				r9 said:
			
		

> Run some software like scandisk or chkdsk /r from repair console from winXP CD there maybe lost files taking hdd space who do not exists in filenames.



I'm running Vista  It should be running Checkdisk now. I'll see the results when I come home from work.


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 17, 2008)

to put it to you this way, HD makers Measure Bytes in Decimal, where MS reads the Drives in proper terms, aka 8bits= 1 byte.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte


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## Deleted member 38767 (Sep 17, 2008)

eidairaman1 said:


> to put it to you this way, HD makers Measure Bytes in Decimal, where MS reads the Drives in proper terms, aka 8bits= 1 byte.



I know and that is why Windows finds my 320GB HDD as 298GB one and I don't fuss about it. The problem are the extra 100GB that appear to be used but aren't.


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 17, 2008)

also if you look at your drive properties and look at the capacity, it should display bytes in 320 and then the actual Amt in Gibibytes (MS messed up with the sequencing of GB and GiB, by forgetting to put the I in the Gibibytes (look at my picture for example)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 17, 2008)

so in your disk properties it states the Drive has 100 GiB used?


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## francis511 (Sep 17, 2008)

What about disk management - does that show 298 ? Download easycleaner or similar and use it to see where your hdd space is being used. Or , just go thru the root directory of the drive looking for folders that are the wrong size...


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## P4-630 (Sep 17, 2008)

hidden partition?


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## Deleted member 38767 (Sep 17, 2008)

francis511 said:


> What about disk management - does that show 298 ? Download easycleaner or similar and use it to see where your hdd space is being used. Or , just go thru the root directory of the drive looking for folders that are the wrong size...



I'm using TuneUp Utilities. It shows basically what Windows Explorer - that there are just 150GB used. I'll try some other programs and see what they show. 
I think it may be problem with the NTFS table. In the worst case I'll try backuping the drive and recreating the partition or do a low level format.


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## thraxed (Sep 19, 2008)

Disk Management is part of windows, you get to it by going to your control panel - admin tools - computer management.  On the left side you'll see disk management.  There you should see how the disk is partitioned.   Windows Explorer just going to show you what available on the current partition.  Drives can have more then one partition.   Most likely that 100 gigs is for restoration of windows should it fail.


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## Deleted member 38767 (Sep 19, 2008)

thraxed said:


> Drives can have more then one partition.   Most likely that 100 gigs is for restoration of windows should it fail.



Isn't the restore points saved on the system partition? 
Any way, after repartitioning and reformatting the drive it is all OK now. It appear there were almost 200GB missing actually. I guess there were some problem with NTFS table of the partition (it is one drive - one partition set-up).


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## modder (Sep 19, 2008)

try this:start--run--cmd--chkdsk 
and post your results (use TPUCapture)http://www.techpowerup.com/tpucapture/

i don't know if this command work with vista


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## Dave2010 (Aug 6, 2010)

I've already had the same problem. Bad sectors. Nothing has worked, chkdsk C /r. datarecovering softwares, nothing can save my datas. As I don't want to lose data anymore, Im using an online backup service ( http://fdcanada.ca/en/online-storage/ ). It is much simpler than trying to fix my hdd myself, its avoiding me headaches and I can get back in a short time my contacts, my invoices, and some other importing files.


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## hat (Aug 6, 2010)

About the Gigabyte/Gibibyte discrepency:

Hard drive manufacturers are correct. A terabyte is 1000 gigabytes, but Windows thinks a terabyte is 1024 gigabytes. In fact, 1024 gigabytes doesn't make anything else. Windows works in xibibytes... 8 bits makes a byte as always, but it takes 1024 bytes to make a kibibyte. 1024 kibibytes to make a mibibyte, and so on, however, windows calls these xibibytes kilo, mega, giga, tera (bytes) and so on.

Memory manufacturers are also incorrect. They use xibibytes, but they call it kilo, mega (bytes) like previously described. A 1GB stick of memory is actually a 1 Gibibyte stick of memory, make up of 1024 Mibibytes, not Megabytes.

I developed this foumula myself to predict what hard drives will show up as in windows after reading up on the issue. Say for example we have a 2TB drive, like my storage drive...
2x1000x1000x1000x1000/1024/1024/1024/1024
We multiply by 1000 the first time to go from 2TB to 2000GB, then again to go from 2000GB to 2000000MB, then again for KB, then again for Bytes. Then we divide by 1024 to climb back up the ladder: KB, MB, GB, TB.

My formula predicted my drive would show up as roughly 1.82TiB, rounded. What Windows says:





I don't expect it to be exactly accurate. A drive advertised as 2TB won't exactly have 2 trillion bytes, in fact, mine has almost 400MB extra.

Not sure if this is the OP's problem, but I thought I saw this getting tossed around in this thread as well.


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