Topic: HDD is giving me problems... not sure why

[RGraves]

Hi all. =)

My HD ius giving me hell, it's a Maxtor 30GB IDE (internal.) Windows (as well as Norton, scandisk, etc) reports that the disk has 29.5GB used. But when I select all my files on the HD and select proporties, only 21.5GB is reported. The 29.5 never made sense to begin with since I deleted a 2.1GB program, I should have gained space if anything. At least 2.1GB. But it reports that I only have 1.08GB free. I have tried all sorts of diag programs (norton 2k4 as well as scandisk.)

I currently have the HD set as LBA in the CMOS. Am I missing something?

In case it helps my system is:

2.4Ghz P4 w/HTT Enabled
30.1GB Maxtor HDD
Generic CD-RW
SB Live X-Gamer
GeForce2 MX400 AGP

not sure if any of that helps... but hey, may as well give it on the off chance. ^^;;;

thanks all!

-Robert

PS. I'm not sure if I thanked you all formally for helping me through my CPU problems last time, im on the new box right now and am really happy with it!  =D  I know it was a while back, school started about the same time it all got working and my brain began to sputter lol  sorry if I didnt thank you all until now.  =(

[Sandra]

Its unusual for a 30 gig drive to actually be 30 gig as after its formatted its easy to lose a gig or 2.
I recently installed a western digital 120 gig drive in here and its only showing as 114 gig after formatting.
Have you emptied any files from the garbage bin, including the norton protected ones if that facility is enabled ?

[TR]

RGraves.

Go to the Maxtor web site and down load their trouble shooter download, it worked for me as I got a brand new drive off of them.

It also told me, that the hard drive was in warrenty until 2005 , they sent a brand new hard drive out in 3 days, brilliant service may I add.


Hookstar

[RGraves]

Wow... I didn't know that the Norton Protected files could hold actual space on the HDD.  *laughs*  I never looked into that at all, actually.  Didn't know anything about the feature!  lol

Well, it just gave me quiiite the jump in HDD space!  =D  1.08 to 3.89 lol

THANK YOU!  I poked around for hours trying to get this... amazing lol, just one click and it was fixed =D

Thanks again!
-Robert

[Sandra]

Glad it was sorted so easily Robert, people sometimes forget to empty the bin after deleting stuff as they dont realise its still on the pc until its been emptied  

[RGraves]

Well, it wasn't the bin itself, but the Norton Protected Files.  I'm still not quite sure what these so called "Protected Files" are... are they bin equivolent?

[Sandra]

Theyre usually the files that norton thinks will possibly be deleted unintentionally which may stop some programs running or cause problems with the PC.
I think it stores then for 30 days before deleting them or its a selectable number of days, so if something messes up you can recover them.
Maybe Dack, Lobo or Adept will know its exact function and explain it better  

[Adept]

Don't know about Norton, but if you are running XP it will automatically reserve 2% of your disk space for system restore. This is stored as a hidden system folder.

XP also automatically keeps copies of various system dll files so that they can be restored if corrupted or over-written by another version.

[RGraves]

Alright, by adjusting the System Restore drive allowance and clearing the Norton Protected files, I have managed to regain round-a-bout 4.8GB of space.  =D

Granted, this is still a 4.1GB difference between the reported used space of the C drive and the reported used space of all the combined files in the C drive.  But 4.1 is ALOT better than the original ~8GB.  =P  =D

Adept: I remember reading about that, that XP back's itself up.  Guess there's not much I can do about that though, hm?  If you know a way to get it to... well... not stop, but maybe take up less space, then let me know!  =D  I'm gonna do a bit of surfing on the subject myself.

Thank you all for your support!  =D
-Robert