in regards to the previous post. http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/135360.html i have turned off system restore on both the d and e drives (not sure how that got turned on!!) Turned off paging files (knew they were there) rebooted,, still have a huge amount of system files. Here comes the confusing part. in looking at the drive under right click propertiesit says I have used 97.4 gig when I select all the files on the drive and hit properties, it says 76 gig I have looked at the e: drive the same way .. in properties and file properties,, and they match. at 93.8 and 93.7 I have checked under the system manager,, there is only one partition on this drive. I always run with show hidden files. twenty gig is too much to account for ? any ideas ??? Currently I am trying to find an alternate location for about fifty gig,, and plan to reformat the drive. but I would like to know what the hell is going on here??? when looking at it in diskeeper,, its sister drive e: does not have any of the system files that are used on the d: drive. I would expect the c drive to have all those. (and it does),, but so does the d: drive I had a heat issue a couple months back, and moved all the e files to d,, reformatted,, then moved all the d files to e and reformatted.. both should be about the same when looking at the graph. I am just stumped at this one??

Ok, some things to take into consideration that i did not see in this post or last. One: Just because the box says it is 120gig or 140 gig, does not actually mean that it is that size (just a lil fyi on the side) Two: You have to take into consideration on how much you surf the interenet and download things and all that good stuff. Three: If you have uninstalled programs on the drive, that does not mean all the files associated with the master program do not get deleted. Four: This is most important one. Just becuase you highlited all the folders in the drive and come up with a different reading then what you saw frist does not mean anything. When you highlight everything, it is not going to take into consideration of every file within that folder, do not ask me way, because i have now clue why it is that way but i have seen a lot go that way. I am sure if everyone did it, at least 80% of them would get the same readings. Clean your drives every which way possible. ScanDisk, defrag, Antivirus, adware and spyware removers and so forth You can be amused by the simplest of things. The smartest people in the world, over-look the smallest objects. War does not determine who is right, only who is left.

This simple inconsisitancy is driving me mad Since this is a slave drive, there were never any programs on this drive. It is simply data storage, along with the sister drive. I use both for making homemade videos. There are no temp folders placed on these drives. The internet temp is located in my docs, I'm fairly used to the way windows calulates space,, it will always be a little off,, due to bytes vs kbytes,, and Mbytes. the rounding. but twenty gig ??? Is there any sort of,, hack,, virus,, something I am not aware of that would case a data (slave drive) to have system files, that I cannot locate,, and twenty gig that I cannot account for ???? I have used the ms spyware since install. run a chkdsk allready, and defraged twice now, Will run a max huristic virus check tonight, maybe thats it. If its not,, im stumped,, totally stumped.

I have a 60gig and its 5gigs off, so if you were to double mine to ours then it would be 10gigs off, plus the storage alloted for the recycling bin You can be amused by the simplest of things. The smartest people in the world, over-look the smallest objects. War does not determine who is right, only who is left.

I have also heard that XP SP1 has an issue with big HDs like urs, but i thought it was at like 160gig where it would have trouble. Check all the setting within your BIOS and make sure that they match with what either comes in a booklet with your HD or that is printed right on your HD. I have seen that happen before. You can be amused by the simplest of things. The smartest people in the world, over-look the smallest objects. War does not determine who is right, only who is left.

I think I know why. System Restore has a hidden system folder on every partition. It probably still contains quite a bit of restore information. Firstly, you need to make sure that Windows XP is set to display the stuff you aren't seeing. Open up My Computer. Then select Folder Options from the Tools menu. Click the View tab. Make sure the "Show hidden files and folders" radio button is selected. Then scroll down a bit and untick "Hide protected operating system files". Click Yes when a warning box appears. Then click OK. Now you should be able to see the "System Volume Information" folder on your D:\ partition, but you probably won't have access rights to it. (By default, only the SYSTEM has any access to it.) To make it so you can see what's happening, click Start and then click Run. Type cmd and click OK. Now type the following (exactly as shown) and press Enter: cacls "d:\system volume information" /t /p administrators:f You can simply copy the above statement and then right-click the title bar, point to Edit and click Paste. It should make it so you have full access rights to that folder, and you'll be able to see whether that was really where the problem is. Either way, you can now see what files you really have on your drives, not what Microsoft wants you to see. Free PC Help forums MiniApache

To better visualize the used and free space in an expandable Pie chart try using the free and Standalone program Scanner. No installation required. If you don't like then just delete the folder you unzipped it to. Bryan