Windows: 70GB partition reporting as full but Explorer indicates only 23gb used?

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Spetsnaz Op

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Hello,

I've got Windows Server 2008 R2 (I wanted to try hyper v!) and I put the main OS in its own partition on a 500GB drive. I've been using it for a while with no issues. The partition is around 70GB, and is supposedly full. Last time this occured I just deleted some old crash dumps which were stored and taking up space.

This time, however, no such dumps appear to exist and when I go to the root directory in windows explorer, select all and click properties, it says only 24GB are being used. The expected hogs (windows folder, users folder, program files folders, programdata) utilize about 23GB. All other files/folders, according to windows, utilize <500mb. I've confirmed that windows completes its size compilation (takes a while at first to figure out the sizes of the folders). Any ideas what could be going on?

The paging file is on a completely different partition so that isn't it. Not sure what it could be. Hidden files are visible in windows explorer so I'm (hopefully) not missing any directories.
 
hibernation file (hyberfill.sys), may be 1/2 to the entire size of you ram (16gb of ram, will make hyberfill.sys between 8 and 16gb usually larger than 1/2 however)

the winsxs dir. is a pretty big offender, but from what i understand, there isnt much you can do about it.

ummm... go get windirstat, let it run... see where the usage is
 
Well thanks Thor for recommending windirstat, great program. It reports that 26gb (I "misrecalled" when I said 24 in the first post) are being used across 122365 files on the volume (well the column says "> Size"...).

CHKDSK reports that 6827xxxx KB are used in 110376 files and that the disk space is 6860xxxx KB. Cluster size is 4096kb (default) and there isn't a size vs size on disk discrepancy worth mentioning (it's like maybe 100-200mb). SMART checks don't indicate any problems and the other (much larger) partitions on the same drive seem normal.

I'm probably just going to backup the files, reformat the partition and restore in a couple months when I have more free time (or, better yet, just reformat and install a fresh copy). Not really worth all this fuss when I've got spare drives lying around, though it is a curiosity. Plus it is annoying to do when it's the partition your OS is on, but I guess that's why I gave it its own partition anyway.

Oh and the hibernation file is normal, I've got 4gigs of ram and it is 4gb. I do like to be able to hibernate. NOD32 hasn't found anything "fishy" but I guess that doesn't rule out any malicious stuff. Hmm.
 
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I was searching and found a thread on technet with almost the exact same problem...someone fixed it by running dir /a/s on a command line with elevated (admin) privledges and magically recovered 100GB in unaccounted for free space (see: http://social.technet.microsoft.com...l/thread/281f636c-588d-42bc-9058-f7cb891ba66f ). In another case the person was able to just do a reboot to fix the problem. Hasn't worked for me but just in case someone else finds this thread in the future..

edit: Problem Solved. It turns out that NOD32 Antivirus was creating huge, locked temp files in my windows/temp folder. Also, and this is golden, it locks the files and they are not counted by windows explorer unless you attempt to enter this temp folder and accept a prompt..even if you enable hidden + system file viewing...nor were they even seen as part of the used space by WinDirStat. The folder is 39.9GB, 39.8 of which are nod32 temp files. Yeah. Here is a link to someone else who had a similar (well, the same) issue with nod32 on win7-64:

http://superuser.com/questions/215812/eset-nod32-antivirus-creating-huge-files-in-temp-folder

for the record I'm using a 64 bit version of 7-zip with nod32 4.0 on server 2008 r2...naturally though the NOD32 is going bye bye for a while. Might be time to try norton 360, apparently it's gotten good reviews...hopefully they are server os friendly without charging $$$$$. Heh. Case closed :) Maybe if they come out with nod64 I'll give em another go! Never really had any problems with eset stuff before...well aside from their security suite when the firewall messed up some stuff...ah well
 
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