New Laptop with Win 7: HD reporting different free space amounts!

stelydave

Hi,

I recently got a new laptop with Win 7.

The hard disk size is 310 GB and when i look at the HD properties, it tells me I have used 117GB of that, with 192 GB free.

When I select all files (inc. hidden) in the c: drive it tells me there is 38 GB in files.

The summary icon in My Computer says there is 179 GB free of a total size of 289GB.

Does anyone know what the extra space is being used for? Drive is not partitioned and I am pretty sure there is no image stored - if so, I hope its not 80GB!!

Also, why is there a 13GB difference between the free space reported in properties and that of the summary?

All wisdom much appreciated.
Thanks

Overheal

theres no d:\ or Recovery drive?

download and run this tool: http://download.cnet.com/WinDirStat/3000-2248_4-10614593.html When it finishes scanning press F6 and it will show you your free space also.

stelydave

Thanks - thats a handy program.

It is showing total 289 GB in the summary with 179 GB free.

When I select the drive for analysis, it details only 36GB of files!

Is there any way to see if there is a partition that is not formatted or obvious?

Cheers for the help.

Yakuza

It's the whole GB / GiB conversion issue.
The SI unit GB (in the context of hard disk capacity) refers to 1,000,000,000 bytes (and not 1,073,741,824 (2^30), whose SI symbol is GiB (Gibibyte))
So, your 310 GB is 310 * 1,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824, or 288.70999813079834 GiB, which windows "helpfully" reports as 289 GB.

GB in the (more conventional) context of RAM is 2^30.

This should explain it better:
http://wintelguy.com/gb2gib.html

Overheal

Yakuza wrote: »

It's the whole GB / GiB conversion issue.
The SI unit GB (in the context of hard disk capacity) refers to 1,000,000,000 bytes (and not 1,073,741,824 (2^30), whose SI symbol is GiB (Gibibyte))
So, your 310 GB is 310 * 1,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824, or 288.70999813079834 GiB, which windows "helpfully" reports as 289 GB.

GB in the (more conventional) context of RAM is 2^30.

This should explain it better:
http://wintelguy.com/gb2gib.html

whoops - also Press F7 to show unknown filespace

stelydave

Still no idea what the problem was, but ended up reformatting new laptop & reinstalling. After that, everything was as it should have been.

Must have been built by Sony on an early Monday morning!

Thanks to all for the help.

billymitchell

OP, just a few pointers for you if it happens again

-It could be stuff like paging file, hiberfile will take up about 8-10GB depending on your setup.

- System restore points could also be taking up a lot of space.


- Also I noticed before if I streamed alot of stuff from the web, space would fill up mysteriously, but a reboot sorted that out. But a simple restart fixed my issue, free space reappeared.

- Try run an adaware/spyware program, make sure there is no nasty things installed on your harddrive("superantispyware" usually worked for me). But if you did a reinstall, then that should have gotten rid of anything bogus on your machine. Just make sure you have up-to-date antivirus and windows updates on your machine.


Just monitor again after a few weeks use, see if its still playing silly biggers. Hopefully it isnt

Overheal

I was thinking about this too over the last while.

If you go to say, your Documents folder and go into properties, you can roll-back the folder to Previous Versions and whatnot. Seems to me however the OS is storing those Time Machine-type versions, and Windirstat's inability to catalog them, which probably isnt that surprising.

ED E

Overheal wrote: »

I was thinking about this too over the last while.

If you go to say, your Documents folder and go into properties, you can roll-back the folder to Previous Versions and whatnot. Seems to me however the OS is storing those Time Machine-type versions, and Windirstat's inability to catalog them, which probably isnt that surprising.

I dunno about 7 but Vista is known of this. IIRC its called ShadowCopy and though not all versions can access them, they all store them. This can cause drive fluctuations. Same happened for me with one of the SPs as it deleted obsolete files from the OS but did something with the page file I think.

stelydave

Thanks folks.

Can't really add much more to this as drive has since been formatted & working as normal now, but I would be surprised if it was pagefile running at 30gb odd and haven't used the laptop for any streaming so thats not it either.

In the process, I also "upgraded" to windows xp & this has solved a few other issues too, so glad I formatted for a number of reasons now!

Overheal

I also "upgraded" to windows xp & this has solved a few other issues too, so glad I formatted for a number of reasons now!

If you call downgrading to an obsolete operating system an upgrade: by all means.

matt-dublin

It could be volume shadow copy services, can sometimes take up to 15%

Open a command prompt in administrator mode and type in the following:

Vssadmin list shadowcopies

ED E

It seems its "shadows" actually, but good to know about that program, thanks.

C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin list shadowcopies
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.

Error: Invalid command.

---- Commands Supported ----

List Providers        - List registered volume shadow copy providers
List Shadows          - List existing volume shadow copies
List ShadowStorage    - List volume shadow copy storage associations
List Volumes          - List volumes eligible for shadow copies
List Writers          - List subscribed volume shadow copy writers
Resize ShadowStorage  - Resize a volume shadow copy storage association

C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin list shadows
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.

Error: The shadow copy provider had an unexpected error while trying to process
the specified command.


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{fee4ba63-d47d-11de-8f6b-806e6f6e6963}\
   Shadow Copy Storage volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{fee4ba63-d47d-11de-8f6b-806e6f6e69
63}\
   Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 16.276 GB
   Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 17.102 GB
   Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 18.291 GB

Shadow Copy Storage association
   For volume: (E:)\\?\Volume{d282fe48-d6da-11de-8f46-806e6f6e6963}\
   Shadow Copy Storage volume: (E:)\\?\Volume{d282fe48-d6da-11de-8f46-806e6f6e69
63}\
   Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 10.619 GB
   Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 11.106 GB
   Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 13.425 GB

matt-dublin

Sorry meant vssadmin list shadowstorage

I always get that one confused.
It will tell u how much space you're volume shadow copy is

Also don't forget that windows 7 has a hidden system partition

Overheal

its not all that hidden, its less than 100MB. Go to start and run disk management. youll spot it.

stelydave

Overheal wrote: »

If you call downgrading to an obsolete operating system an upgrade: by all means.

In my experience, for compatibility/stability/easy-life I still thinks XP is superior to Vista/W7. Was looking forward to W7 being a considerable improvement but had quite a few issues and found it just wouldn't work properly with our office software & was left with no choice.

Overheal

stelydave wrote: »

Was looking forward to W7 being a considerable improvement but had quite a few issues and found it just wouldn't work properly with our office software & was left with no choice.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/

matt-dublin

It is a considerable improvement.. Ever think maybe your office software might need an upgrade????

What issues with what software are u having?

Minimum u can use windows xp mode, at best there will be a patch or upgrade to resolve the issue

stelydave

@Overheal - thanks for that - gonna have a good look into this tomorrow.

@matt-dublin - Office stuff/printer drivers/etc might well need an upgrade but as of yet they aren't out there!

Cheers.