100GB of space missing, please help.

[QUOTH]

Hello, I have an odd problwm.

I have a 1tb Samsung HDD [hardware listed below] cut into three partitions and some empty space. The partition I am having trouble with is 700GB. Earlier today windows gave me an error complaining this partition was full, I was expecting it to come soon but not this soon. The popup told me I had a few hundred KB left. Here is where it gets weird. I was logged in as the user account not the admin account.

I made sure the recycle bin was empty. I ran disk cleanup and checked all users and emptied the recycle bin again. This made no differnece. I though this was odd so I opened the partition, selected all the folders, right click, properties. I have made no hidden folders and They are set to be visible anyway. In "my computer" it said approx 799gGB was used. The properties of ALL the folders showed only approx 750GB . So 50gb is unacounted for.

Not knowing what to do I looked around the partition and I moved some files and deleted others freeing up 50GB. When I was finished "my computer" showed I had 50.9GB free. When I opened the partition, selected all the folders, right click, properties it showed I had approx 100Gb free. This is what I expected. The 50.9GB I just cleared and the mystery missing 50GB from before.

So I look at my computer again and I now have 5.04gb free [694.96gb used of 700gb]. Again I opened the partition, selected all the folders, right click, properties. 596gb used out of 700GB. I now have 98.96gb of "missing free space". I obviously empied the recycle bin, disk clean up [all users] before checking. During the time this additional 50GB filled up I Didn't run any games, browse the internet or downloaded anything.

So whats going on? Why does my computer think it's using 98.96GB that it shouldn't. I have since run a full system scan with recently updated KIS 09 and found nothing


Oh look, I just got a popup, I'm down to 552 kb *Bangs head against desk*




Ok, a few facts that may be important. I don't use hidden folders, so I haven't lost 50GB or 100GB of files. And in control panel - folder options I've set it so all hidden folders are visible.

I have two user accounts, one admin and one user. I use the user account always. When logged into the Admin account I notice the exact same problem.

I have checked for this inconsistancy and emptied the recycle bin in my user account, my admin account and in safe mode.

I have checked for new drivers for my HDD and found none. Windows and Kaspersky Internet Security are both up to date.

The partition has been recently and thoroughly defragged with Piriform defraggler.


Heres my software and hardware.

KIS 09
Windows Ultimate 32bit
Piriform CCleaner
Priiform Defraggler

nVidia GeForce 8600GTS EVGA
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual 5000+ 2.61GHz
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
4*1GB RAM Kingston DDR2 800MHz/pc2-6400 Hyperx Memory Nvidia SLI- Ready Unbuffered Cl4(4-4-4-12) Non-ECC 2.0v
Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB Hard Drive SATAII *32MB Cache*
COOLER MASTER Real Power M620

 

[hclarkjr]

is system restore turned on?

 

[corkyg]

System Restore and also Shadow Copies, and Quick Search Indexing.

 

[RebateMonger]

Information on adjusting Shadow Copy size.

Identifying how much disk space is used for restore points in Windows Vista

The key is the command line utility, "VSSAdmin".

 

[Fardringle]

If System Restore and Shadow Copies aren't the cause of the "missing" space, run TreeSize on the computer to get a listing of the size of every folder on the hard drive. Look at the largest folders in the report to get an idea of what is taking up space on the drive.

 

[QUOTH]

Ah, OK, I've found a 108GB file on the partition. 108.8476563GB to be exact.

E:\$RECYCLE.BIN\S-1-5-21-1671283502-91381590-1001\$R8I4YD8.mkv

I opened piriform defraggler and looked at the fragmented files. the most fragmented file was the one above.

So what do I do now? How do I find and get rid of this [I'm guessing useless] file?


Thanks all.

EDIT: thought there where no replies, will read up on Rebate Monger's links.

Thanks all.

EDIT: I have gone control panel, system, system properties, system protection tab. It says C drive has system restore enabled but the other partitions on the drive [I'm having trouble with the third, E] dosen't.

I right clicked E [the partition with the problem] properties and selected the "Previous versions" tab. It said there where no previous versions available.

I have disabled and reenabled sytem restore on C and then made a new restore point so something shows up when I run command prompt as administrator and type vssadmin as shown here

http://bertk.mvps.org/html/diskspacev.html

• C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin list shadowstorage
  vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
  (C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.
  
  Shadow Copy Storage association
  For volume: (C\\?\Volume{15079357-51f7-11dd-8638-806e6f6e6963}
  Shadow Copy Storage volume: (C\\?\Volume{15079357-51f7-11dd-8638-806e6f6e69
  63}
  Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 76.125 MB
  Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 300 MB
  Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 4.177 GB

This seems to show that shadow copy is not the problem.

 

[RebateMonger]

In Explorer, if you hit the "Organize / Folder and Search Options / View" menu at the top, you can disable the "Hide protected operating system files" checkbox.

At that point, you can see the Recycle Bin in Explorer.

I'm assuming you just need to empty your Recycle Bin????

 

[QUOTH]

I promise, my recyle bin is empty. At least in a normal way, there may be a odd complicated way I don't know of. When I open the recycle bin it says theres nothing there [because I've emptied it ]. This happens when logged in as a user, as the administrator and in safe mode. I have right clicked, properties on the partition [E:] and disk cleanup and selected all users. It says the recycle bin is empty there aswell.

Crazy huh? Anyway when would I have deleted a 108GB .mkv [video file]. I *think* I have seen this file mentioned before for a few months. So I'd guess it's been growing?

Ok, so I've done as you suggested rebate monger and I can now see the $RECYCLE.BIN folder and it is 108GB as expected [when logged in as user, its only 3.21Gb when logged in as admin]. There is the "Recycle Bin" folder and 8 folders with names like "S-1-5-21-1671283502-91381590-1000".

They all start "S-1-5-21- " and all end 1000 or 1001.

Hovering my cursor over the folders they say they are empty. As I posted above the 108GB file is in folder "S-1-5-21-1671283502-91381590-100".

When I'm logged in as a user the $RECYCLE.BIN folder is 108GB in size. When logged in as administrator it's only 3.21GB. There is still only a few hundred kb of free space.

As a user I can't delete or open any of these folders. When logged in as administrator I can't open any of them but I can delete them. When I right click, properties on the "recycle bin" within $RECYCLE.BIN it says it's 108GB in size. When I open it it is empty.

EDIT: I just opened this recycle bin and the file in question was there, but it was 0kb in size. It wouldn't let me delete or restore it. Now it's dissappeared.

Also if it's important the maximum recycle bin size of the E drive/partition is 37888MB. 37GB.


So whats going on, how do I fix it and how do I stop it from happening again?

Thanks all for your help and patience



If no one knows whats going on what are my options? If need be I could buy another 1tb drive, copy everything across and then format this drive. I'm assuming this wouldn't help in the long run, and I'd prefer not to have to buy another 1tb drive.

I could always reinstall windows, is there any reason to assume this would work?

 

[RebateMonger]

To quote a Microsoft KB article:

"HKEY_USERS on Local Machine
S-1-5-21-191058668-193157475-1542849698-500 administrator
S-1-5-21-191058668-193157475-1542849698-1000 User one
S-1-5-21-191058668-193157475-1542849698-1001 User two
S-1-5-21-191058668-193157475-1542849698-1002 User three"

Those numbers represent accounts on the computer. Presumably, files in each folder are deleted files that "belong" to each account.

 

[QUOTH]

I have no -500 folders, just -1000 and -1001.

I have an administrator account and a user account.

So how does that help?

[I've edited my last post]

 

[QUOTH]

W T F

Ok, so I deleted piriform CCleaner as I guessed that my possibly have been the problem. Maybe. As i tended to use it to empty to recycle bin. After uninstalling I checked and the recycle bin was empty

So I just deleted 4ish GB of stuff. I then emptied the recycle bin and checked my computer to see if it was gone.

And now I have 103GB of free space on the problem partition.

So pleased.

So It seems to be fixed, may have been CCleaner's fault. Ill let you know if the free space gets filled again in the next few minutes.

Thanks all.

EDIT:

Ok, so now I have 109GB free. Strange.