Computer Help, HD space is missing…

It’s not often I ask for computer help, but I for the life of me can’t figure something out.

Just got a new computer, running XP professional, all current updates, it has a 70 gig hard drive (Fear my massive HD ) , right now it only says I have 7 gigs of memory left on the HD I can’t figure out what the Heck is wrong, my file sizes under properties don’t even come close to adding up to 63 gigs….

18.8 gigs in documents and settings
1.1 gigs in an IBM folder
2.5 gigs in program files
3.2 gigs in Windows

and I get about 26 gigs or so adding some other smaller.

It keep shrinking I’m at a loss here.

I suspect the “missing” space has something to do with recording tv, off my tv tuner card with a program called orb, I check the folder they are recorded to, and I only see the space taken up by the current couple shows I have in there “taped” I’ve recorded others and deleted them. The program works nice, but there is little compression and hour long program is aroung 2-2.5 gigs.

Help me

Defrag and call me in the morning.

Just a thought. Is you HD partitioned? If you hold your mouse over each file listed on your HD it should show you the size.

PS I have 150 GIG on the puter with another 250 on an external HD

First off I have an external HD (300 gig), if one were to keep videos of ill repute, they would probably be on there, really it’s just music.

Ran defrag already (before I posted, twice), no change, ran check disk the “full takes for ever version”, no change.

No partitions, The C drive and my external show up. The drive properties say something like 62 gigs used, 7 something free.

Trust me I have twice the info on my laptop (50 gig), and I’m not out of space on that, something is wrong.

just a shot in the dark, but when my brother purchased his new dell, it came with a program called norton ghost. this would make system restore points, backing everything up on his computer, these files filled up his HD real quick and after two weeks, the file was already 20 gig.

I just opened the program and restricted the size of the backup and its frequency.

one possibility

Definitley something to do with the Video and Orb.

Do you have any future recordings setup?
I wonder if the deleted recordings are still somewhere on the drive? I know the recycle bin holds a lot of data but not enough to account for the missing number of Gigs?

go into your hard drive with My Computer then select the drive you want to check. After you have that drive open placing your cursor over individual root folders should show you used space and sub folders or other things. If you find a folder that looks suspicious, open it and go down the list in side it.
If your machine doesn’t show the space used automatically, you can do it the hard way by right clicking and selecting Properties. That’ll give you a bunch more info, number of files, memory used and such
Also, if the hard drive is dying it might be the controller is seeing less and less room that can be used. If you can’t find any thing else look and see if you’ve got any software to check the hard drive and hope you don’t have a worm.
WarrenMN

Now you guys are scaring me, because I suddenly started having this same problem about a week ago
A sweep for spyware found 30 critical items!
I also would suggest going to internet explorer or your chosen web home page. In the pull down menu, go to “tools” and down to “internet options”. Use the pop up window to delete your cookies, web history and temporary internet files.
This was not a total solution for me, but did offer a significant improvement.
Good luck
cheers

I run regular maintence, so I know it’s not files taking up space.

I think charlie may be one to something I’ll have to look into that

Some programs reserve HUGE chunks of your hd for “cache files.” They don’t necessarily contain files, but are reserved for that program’s use. Check the settings in the programs that you suspect to see if this is the case.

Another thing to do is run the Windows add/remove utility, a file disk cleanup utility and see if something odd pops up.

Good luck.

Dan

This little thing will give you a breakdown on what folders are taking up what space.
Access tree

I would check the size and settings for your swap (paging) file. You may need to do some maintenance there.

Seems Charlie is correct, I found my missing 31 gigs in IBM backup recovery, so I need to make some changes to the program.

Thanks!