Topic: Deleting files

[daveeb]

Wasn't sure where to put this one  . I have a nice newly installed 120 Gb slave drive.  ntfs file system.  i deleted a large (6 GB) folder from it which at the time was the only folder on it aprt from "recycler".  It was too big for the recycle bin so i went for the full delete option.  However the space has not been reclaimed so i'm 6 GB down.  if it keeps on doing this i'll have a "full" drive with no files on it as i delete a lot of large video files when i've used them.  Anyone know how to rectify this problem ?

EDIT  i forgot to add that the "recycler" folder had 0 contents and has now bizarrely vanished. i have 4 GB worth of files on the drive but it shows as 10 GB....weird

thankee  

[Simon]

Just an idea - Disc Cleanup?  My Computer, then right click the drive, select Properties, then hit the Disc Cleanup button.  Don't know - might work.  

[daveeb]

Thanks simon but i tried that, I've only got the contents of one home made music dvd on it so there's nothing to clean up  

[Simon]

Don't know then.  You'll have to wait for a grown-up.  

[daveeb]

hee hee, i asked my mummy and she said son why don't you try emptying the norton protected recycle bin, so i did and the space is now reclaimed.  wahoo   so its cocoa then bed for me now.  thanks simon  

[ketamininja]

Hmmmm, very very strange! Glad you got it sorted...

here's some more info for others with this problem:

Just to run through how deleting works - like a book, your hard drive has a table of contents, and lots of chapters with "data".

When we normally delete something, it only removes the TOC entry. This means the data is still really there on the hard drive, but there is no reference to that area. That area is therefore considered blank.

This explains how the police catch people looking at naughty photos from the web that they thought they deleted!

Anyway, ...  from this if your TOC data was deleted for the 6GB, the hard drive space should show that there is an extra 6GB. This has not happened. I would therefore suggest that the TOC links have not been removed correctly.

Get yourself some sort of recovery tool ... PC Inspector, OnTrack Data Recovery, or even PQ MAGIC (in fact I would suggest the latter). These can do all sorts of checks, deletes, etc etc.

[daveeb]

hi ketamininja   the space is reclaimed when i empty the norton protected recycle bin or if i disable this "feature" completely so norton is presumably responsible for hijacking the toc entries.  not sure why the recycle bin needs to be protected or why some files end up in there and some in the plain old recycle bin anyhow.  

[ketamininja]

Ahh, its just protected from viruses hiding in there.

Not sure why norton wants to mess around with it either, especially since it said it couldn't be moved to the recycle bin.

I think its MS telling lies again!  

[daveeb]

Thanks, i think i'll banish this particular norton feature for good  >