600MB "Missing"

[Wilbur]

I installed XP Pro on an old machine last night (266Mhz PII with 128MB memory). Everything went fairly smoothly as for as running is concerned. I used NTFS for the file system and chose to install as "new" or whatever (not an upgrade). I had Windows 98SE on it before but installed to a new WinXP directory so there was no mixing of files. After installing XP I deleted all the old folders I didn't need (Windows and a lot of folders under "Program Files" that obviously wouldn't work anymore, like Visual Studio and Office). I did not do any kind of importing of settings, this was a clean install. While all those folders were sitting in the Recycle Bin I had about 3.2GB available on disk. After emptying the Bin I had 3.99GB available, and I know there was well over 1GB in the Bin (Visual Studio alone was just under 1GB). Now when I check the properties on the drive it says I have 2GB used and 4GB available (this is a 6GB drive), but when I select all the folders and files and check properties on that it says I'm only using 1.4GB (1.3GB "On disk"). So what's going on? Why is there a 600MB difference? I have my folder view set for showing hidden and system files and my swap file and "hibernation" file were included in the select. Running the Scandisk-like utility did not clear it up and neither did "Disk Cleanup". I haven't Defragmented yet but I don't see how they could help anything. One method shows 2GB in use and one shows 1.4GB in use. When I do this on my W2K machine at work I get almost identical numbers (15.9G v. 15.7G) and similarly with my still-98SE machine at home. I can understand a little differnece between the nubmers (Actually it's inexcusable, but thats a different topic), but a 600MB difference? What gives?

[njovin]

Even if you have the folder settings to show hidden files, there is another view option of "Hide Protected Operating System Files" that must be unchecked to really show everything.

By the way, on my machine, even with that option unchecked, there is still a ~300MB discrepency. I have never found windows disk space reporting to be very accurate until it gets down to under 100MB free space, but it never bothers me much

[Wilbur]

I had that one unchecked too. I believe it pops up a dialog when you do that to make you confirm you want to do it.

I can't be sure, I wasn't paying that much attention, but I think the reporting was pretty conistent right up until I emptied the Recycle Bin, then it got squirrely. I have no idea why that would be.

[slauhter]

Hi,

With WinXP there are two main causes of this space missing.

1) Pagefile
2) Hibernation File

The pagefile you can do noting about really as it is required by windows to run smoothly especially with the Ram you have.

The Hibernation File is used to backup Ram when a laptop battery is low preventing data loss, however it is set active by default even on PC installs.
If you disable it you will usually gain the same amount of space as you have Ram.

To Disable.
START/CONTROL PANEL/POWER OPTIONS.
Click on the Hibernate Tab and uncheck the enable Hibernation box.

[Wilbur]

I included both the pagefile and hibernation file in the selection so their sizes should have been included in the total.

[Miz]

Some space is taken up by formatting. The larger the drive, the more space is used. I don't know any more details than that, I only know that's the way it is.

It may be that things got squirrely after emptying the Recycle Bin because when you delete data it doesn't actually go away, it just gets removed from Window' "index" so it doesn't see it anymore and the space can be overwritten with new data. Sometimes Windows doesn't make the adjustment too well when a large amount of data is deleted. Defragging usually solves the problem.

There's also the "file size" and "size on disk" discrepancy. If a file has even one byte more than the cluster can hold, it will slop over into the next cluster. That cluster won't be anywhere near full but it will be used. An NTFS cluster is 4KB so while the data may only be a couple of bytes, it will be using 4KB of storage space.