Help: 8 GBs missing from my hard drive (No a conversion issue) !!!!!

When I go under 'properties' of my C: drive, it show that I'm using 16.2 GBs out of my 82.3 GBs hard drive. The thing is that under the C: drive I have the following folders adding only 8.4 GBs:
Windows (2.03 GB), SWSetup (3.47 GB), Program Files (1.84 GB), and My Documents (1.02 GB)

Can somebody tell me where to find the missing 8 GBs? I've already checked the hidden folders and they are using only 250 MBs.

Thanks

 

Sounds like Windows is taking a lot of space for the swap file...

 

Could you please expand a little bit more on that comment? I don't seem to understand it.

Thanks.

 

Check your Partitions.

Try Downloading GParted Live CD. Boot with CD and you with see where your GB's are allocated.

Checking via windows probally won't show a possible swap or hidden Partition.

 

Windows uses part of ur hard drive for whats called virtual memory, so that takes a good chunk of ur hard drive space. Also, hibernate requires a certain amount of space when on, so that might affect it too.

 

Depending on your manufacturer, you may have that 8gb portion of your drive taken up for recovery software, the XP installer, etc etc. Any partition snooper should be able to show you if that's the case.

 

Check system restore. It can use up to 12% of your disk space, which in your case would be somewhere around that magic number of missing GBs. I think system restore files are considered protected operating system files and are hidden by default. You might have to disable "Hide protected operating system files" in order to view the system restore folder.

 

It might be the recovery partion

 

I think he's saying that his C: drive is 82.3 GB, which would make sense for a 100 GB drive minus the restore disk partition, that Quickplay partition, and of course the whole 1000/1024 issue whereby "100 GB" is actually 94 GB or so. So it's not a partition issue.

More likely it's the swapfile, hibernation file, and system restore. It is unlikely that those are only 250 MB total. The hibernation file should match the size of your memory, and the swapfile should be somewhat larger than the amount of memory you have. How much memory do you have in this computer, anyway?

 

The suspect files may be hidden, try this:

Tools -> Folder Options -> Click on the View Tab -> Select "Show Hidden Files and Folder"

Once done, check again and see if you can find the files. However, DO NOT delete them unless you know exactly what they are, what they are for, and whether you will need them.

 

I second the above.


.

 

The laptop has 1GB of RAM.

Update:
Hey Mr Foolish, you were right.
I unhidded the operating system files and I found most of the missing GBs. For starters, I didn't realize I had 4GBs in my recycle bin. . Then I found 2 hidden system files named: pagefile (1.5 GBs) and hiberfil (1 GB). Also, I found under system files a couple of folders with 0.5 GBs. Total? 7.0 GBs. I guess now I'm only missing 1 GB which is ok.

 

Oh by the way, I was talking specifically about drive C: I still have the partition D: with Recovery files.