Space used on HDD with vista

glass

Inactive User
Joined
Dec 25, 2006
Messages
186
Reaction score
1
Just a question thats kinda confused me.

I just got a new laptop, has a 160gb hdd with 137gb avalible on my C: drive, of which 39.4 is being used.

The remaining 20gb or so is used for the system restore partition D: drive.

However out of the 137gb on my C: drive i cannot find 39.7 which is being used up. If i view all folders (including hidden) there is only 16gb being used that i can find.

Any ideas/resons to this so my mind can be at ease knowing that i will be able too download 40gb more "legit" stuff?

Cheers
 
Perhaps you a have a similar problem to the one I had.
I had files in the recycle bin that were not showing. I had to delete the recycle bin to fix it and then windows created an new one automatically.
To see the folder I had to not only choose show hidden files and folders but also uncheck the hide protected system files option
 
I tweaked n Tweaked my Vista in my Laptop to make it go faster...I liked it BUT! For some unknown reason, whilst Renameing a Photo it would rename half a dozen with same name within two folders...
So I decided Enough is enough...I put in a New 120GB HDD and put Windows XP on it...Did not load in the SATA Drivers at F8 But it Fires up n Works Brilliantly...Check in BIOS if you got SATA Enhanced/Compatible.
Was told this by ASUS...Unfortunatly I aint got it in my BIOS but it Works...No Complaints this end.
Vista is too Blooted..
Enjoy Life n Vista!
 
Just a question thats kinda confused me.

I just got a new laptop, has a 160gb hdd with 137gb avalible on my C: drive, of which 39.4 is being used.

The remaining 20gb or so is used for the system restore partition D: drive.

However out of the 137gb on my C: drive i cannot find 39.7 which is being used up. If i view all folders (including hidden) there is only 16gb being used that i can find.

Any ideas/resons to this so my mind can be at ease knowing that i will be able too download 40gb more "legit" stuff?

Its probably down to allocation size of clusters.

Most hdd's these days use a granuarity of 4K so this is the smallest filesize they can allocate. A small file, which uses say 1k, will require a full 4k allocation of disk space. In this case the file will contain 75% wasted space. The bigger the files the less percentage waste.

NTFS, the filing system used on XP/Vista does have some abilities to deal with very small files without allocating clusters. It does this by storing the file contents in the actual file header area. Not sure what the abilities of this are but I imagine it will only be for files of less than 1/2k or so.

The file sizes displayed next to files is usually the actual number of bytes within the file - not the size of the allocated space.

A useful point about dead space is that it often allows a file to be extended by a few bytes (on average, upto 2k) without having to actually move the file to a new allocated space.

There may also be some system files which dont show up in your scan. These may remain hidden regardless of you displaying hidden files.

oh, and lets not forget the differences between how various people define Gigabyte and Megabyte. Disk drive manufacturers often define there Gigabytes as 1000 Megabytes (rather than 1024 Megabytes) and there Megabytes as 1000 Kilobytes (again rather than 1024). On a 160Gb drive this can give you a difference of 160Gb (171,798,691,800 bytes) as opposed to 160 * 10^9 (160,000,000,000 bytes)
 
Last edited:
Back
Top