PC Pals Forum
Technical Help & Discussion => Self Building, Upgrading & General Hardware Help => Topic started by: Nige on February 11, 2005, 15:20
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Can anyone here help?
My friend has a 40 gig hard drive on his computer which is more than enough for his general needs as he's not even connected to the internet. He came to save a few pictures he'd took with his digital camera but then had a warning message flash up which said his hard drive was full. On examining his computer, I found that even with all his picture albums and photo editing programs etc. etc. His total disc usage was only about 10 gigs. This includes the operating system and everything else. So we set about finding where the missing 30 gigs were but can't..we can't even de-frag it as the de-frag needs 15% free space and he doesn't even have 1%, so the computer is totally blocked with something and it says so when you click properties on the C drive. But we can't find anywhere this missing 30 gigs might be....anyone help please?
Nige
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:welcome: Nige. I'm not a techie but despite not being connected to the internet, there is still a possibility that he could be infected by a virus from a removable drive such as a floppy disc or CD. Hopefully there will be an antivirus program installed so try running it and let us know the result. A real techie will be along later. :D
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Hi Nige and welcome to pc-pals. :D
Have you checked the clipboard incase your friend has been storing pictures to it. If he has been editing pictures and not clearing them from the clipboard it could be eating up his space. 30 gigs seems an awful lot though.
Also if his drive has been partitioned it could just be the C: drive that's full. His he running XP?
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Hi Clive and Lona,
Thanks for the very quick replies. He has Norton AV on his computer which we ran to see if a virus had gotten in but it came up clean...It's a real mystery why we can't find where the missing 30 gigs are..I ran Windows Explorer on all his files and folders, hidden ones as well and we still came up with 10 gigs used...Wouldn't the clipboard show up on one of his files? I don't know?
But when you look at the de-frag 'diagram' where it shows you in different colours the actual usage, this 30 gigs was shown as a solid block, not broken up...unusual, I reckon.
Nige
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Sorry, forgot to mention, yes, he has XP Home edition and no, the hard drive isn't partitioned.
Nige
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Have you re-booted since this problem started? Sometimes a re-boot can cure all ills. :D You might also like to try a system restore while you are waiting.
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Yes, we re-booted it several times but haven't tried the system restore, that's one option we have. If he'd been connected to the internet, I would have assumed it could have been ads and spyware, so would have run Spybot and Adaware, but he's not...
Nige
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Hi Nige,
I'm not one of the techies whom Clive told about. :)
I'm thinking of the size reserved to the bin, (maybe).
Logically, the size of the bin must be part (included in) of the operating system. But maybe it's worthy to try it anyway, as you'r going to lose nothing.
Right click the "Bin" (on the desktop), and take "Property". There you'll find the size of the space reserved to it. The windows default configuration is usually about 10 % of the HDD. If it's much more than that, you can replace it to the 10 % .
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Thanks for that,
We ran disc clean-up which emptied the bin and all the temporary files but there was only about 2 megs of rubbish in there...I just wished there was a program which told you exactly where the disc space was being used up, then we could get rid of it, if it wasn't for the fact that we couldn't load a new program on there, not enough room :-[
Nige
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No Nige ! I didn't mean that. I didn't speak about the bin contents. I spoke about the "RESERVED SPACE FOR THE BIN", (the maximum allowed space for the bin to take from the hard drive.)
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Hi Nige,
Right, regards Clives question regards virus scanning: You say he scanned with Norton, but if he does not connect to the Web, his Virus Definitions will not be upto date.
Regards his missing 30GB, what does "System Info" say regards its size?
Right click on > My Computer left or right Click > System Info, on the System Tab down the bottom it should say something like 37.31GB
I'm on a 40GB HD, and thats the figure it shows for mine.
Sorry I'm off to make tea now
:)
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No Nige ! I didn't mean that. I didn't speak about the bin contents. I spoke about the "RESERVED SPACE FOR THE BIN", (the maximum allowed space for the bin to take from the hard drive.)
joudi there's no need to shout ;D and in anycase I'll eat my hat, and everybody else's if its 30GB ;D
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Hi Nige, have you actually looked to see how much space your Dad's pictures are using.?
You could burn photos to disc and then delete photos then see what space is showing.
My Hubby got a new digi camera for his Xmas and was taking pictures like they were going out of fashion. Before he knew it he had 3 gig of pictures as was saving them all as bmp files.
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Sounds very much like norton protected files (recycler) to me. I cant for the life of me remember how to get norton to properly delete files but i did have a similar problem which was resolved after tweaking the norton settings. ;D
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eeeek i've changed sex again :o
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Just right click on it and delete files. After they are deleted repeat again. "Protected files" will then come up and they can be deleted too.
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I've changed your pic for you Dave! Is Bart OK? ;D
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Hi, Nige. :welcome:
This really is a strange one. Has your friend had this hard drive from new? Has it ever shown (around) 40GB? My first thought is that someone has tried to create a partition 10/30 and it has gone wrong and lost the 30GB partition. In fact (if I owned my own house) I would bet my house on it.
How old is the computer? Some older motherboards will only support hard drives up to a certain size unless you upgrade (flash) the Bios.
Finally (and this is very doubtful) you mentioned Norton. Is this just Norton Anto-Virus or is it the full works. Many years ago, when a 1.7GB hard drive was about the biggest you could get, I installed Norton Utilities on a disk with 1.2GB free and it took up nearly 800MB. When I had looked through all the options, I discovered that a feature was enabled that optimised Swap File usage, and it had created a 450MB Swap File.
I would first check that the computer supports a 40GB hard drive and, if it does, check for a lost partition.
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Hi folks and glad we're back.
OK, My friends computer is 12 months old and hasn't been 'messed' with by anyone. It's never been online, the Disc is 37.something gig and not partitioned, the only things that have gone on to it are games which his wife plays (420meg) programs, operating system and his files and folders.
Up until a week and a half ago, he had 10 gig showing as being used space with 27 gig freespace.
He uses it mainly for photo editing his family and holiday photo's, of which he has many....On checking all his files and folders with windows explorer, we could still only come up with about 10 gig of used space...When right clicking on C drive properties, it's now showing that the entire C drive is full, he has less than 1% of free space. His bin is allocated 10%. I wouldn't have thought that it was Adware and Spyware choking it up as he's not online, would the general opinion be that it could be a virus?
Nige
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If its not storing the missing gigs in nortons protected files then I would think that somehow its storing them in the working folder of his photo editing program, which should be a temprorary folder.
If you open his photo editing program and look in the preferences or settinngs it may give you the working folder location.
If you cant find it in there then it will probably be in a folder inside C\program files\name of editing prog :)
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Thanks Sandra,
What I'll do is pop down there again now and re-check everything. I'm no expert and could easily have missed something. Just wished this was England, then I'd tell him to take it into a shop for examination.
Nige
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So where are you then Nige :)
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South of Spain, just inland from the coast.
Nige
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I would rather have your weather and no computer shops handy than be here in the cold and wet surrounded by them :(
I do do house calls if youre ever really stuck, for the price of a return airline ticket and a couple of weeks of food, wine and accomodation
:D :D :D
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May just take you up on that Sandra :D
Back shortly
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Have you tried to check if his computer is set to another/or others user too?
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If that don't work,
you know what I would do:
Burn his "My Docs" folder and all his photo's to disk, [always handy to have a back up on Cd's]
That should leave him with, about 5/6GB OS and programs on C: drive.....plus this missing 27GB of harddrive, allocated to lord knows what.
Partition C: Drive with Partition Magic [idiot proof]
Once installed go to Tasks > Create New Partition > hive 27GB off C:Drive. This will leave C:Drive as a 10GB Primary Active Partition, plenty big enough for the 5/6GB of OS and programs.
Once you have made the new 27GB logical partition, reformat it, that way it will give you back your 27GB.
Once you see how easy it is, I dare say he may want to make that 27Gb partition into two partitions. Nominating one say as a 25GB partition for all his Photos, and say a 2GB partition for his own inputed Data.
My 40GB Drive is partitioned as follows
C:Drive... 10GB...........OS/Progs used.............. ....................5.5GB
D: Data .... 2GB
E: Media .. 10GB
F: BackUp.. 9GB
G: Spare ....9GB
There again He might not want to partition his Hard Drive, just thought it was worth suggesting.
:?