Disappearing hard drive space?

K

Kazappin

Gawd
Joined
Nov 13, 2008
Messages
576
I have a seagate barracuda 500GB hard drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148288) with 465GB of usable space. I don't really have anything at all installed on this (CoD4, firefox, office '07 suite, and aim is all) Yet I continually see disappearing space. I used to have 450GB free after installation, and then it went to 420GB free, 400GB free, and now it's down to 369GB free. I don't have anything other than the above installed on this computer, and even if I don't do anything, I lose space. I left it on today for some defragging and when I came home it had 20GB less space than when I left.

I don't know if this is a Vista Issue, program issue, or faulty hard drive, can anyone help?

Thanks!
 
Vista :D it uses more space as it grows... someone else can chime in but there is a good program to tell you the size of all your folders and where the space is being used.
 
Yes....because hard drives count space differently than windows does. A 500GB drive isnt actually 500GB after its formatted and in windows.... Its always been like that. That sounds about right on your space.

Exact same reason a 4.7GB blank dvd is 4.37gb in actual space in windows.
 
I know, after formatting and windows it's 465GB. I'm still missing close to 80GB of space (I counted all the space my files are taking up).
 
Ok i didnt actually read your entire post.

Ok well that issue definitely seems odd. Im not sure what to tell you there.

Some driver or bios or compatibility issue? Hard to say. Ive never heard of an issue like that.
 
Lazn_Work said:
Do you have "Shadow copies" or "Previous Versions" also sometimes called protected by "System Restore" enabled on this drive?

That "may use up to 15 percent of the available space on a partition to store previous versions of files. "

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060730-7383.html
Click to expand...

Thanks, I actually did have that enabled, I turned it off and rebooted and now have 425GB free!

Thanks all of you!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top