Missing Disk Space?

My Gateway p7801u has a harddrive of 320 gigabytes of memory. That's pretty good. Then I realized that 20 gigs of it is missing as I only have 298 gigs of the expected 320. Why is this so? I think I read somewhere that it is required for system processes and whatnot but I am not sure.


Anyway the real problem lies a year later when i am cleaning out my hard drive as it is nearing full capacity (6 gigs left sigh).


After clearing out all of the stuff I didn't need, I realized that when I selected ALL the folders in My Computer (including hidden folders), they only added up to 210 gigs, BUT when I looked at the icon of My Computer, it says I have 250 gigs! Where did the other 40 gigs go???

 

You're a bit confused. You have a 320GB hard drive. Memory refers to RAM, which you probably have between 1-4GB of.

Part of that goes to hibernate files, some goes to system restore files, others can be lost to defragmentation.

 

Yeah I meant Hard Drive Memory. I wish I could clarify it by changing the title.

Where would hiberate, system restore, and defragmentation files be stored? And can I delete or change them? I've always thought that I had a lot less files than the amount of memory it took up...

 

320,000,000,000 bytes in hard drive terms where they divide by 1000 is 320GB.

In file terms where they divide by 1024 -> 298.02GB.

500GB hard drive-> 465GB
1TB hard drive -> 931GB...

 

Oooh I see. Thanks this was very helpful. I had no idea. I've knew that some of the missing space was reserved for system files, but I thought that was the missing 20 gigs, but I guess it is supposed to miss the 20 gigs. I wonder why they would use two standards like this and mixing in bits with bytes. I suppose this is a marketing scheme to make consumers thing they get more than what they pay for? Makes sense.

So I guess that the missing 40 gigs are the system files then?

 

You said that you enabled viewing of hidden files and folders, but did you also disable "Hide protected operating system files"?

 

Seriously? Please don't take this the wrong way, but might I suggest some light reading? Half.com: PCs for Dummies: Windows 7 Edition by Dan Gookin (2009, Paperback)

As for actual vs reported hdd space, this article from Seagate gives a detailed explination: Storage Capacity Measurement Standards

 

Nice, so there's my recycle bin! Well, it added another 10 gig chunk so I guess I am missing 30 gigs and not 40 gigs.

Yea, I was a bit confuzzled at first since this isn't really obvious. What I really wanted to know is why I was missing 20 gigs from the listed hard drive space and then missing 40 gigs from the My Computer folder.

I knew one of them had to be system stuff but I wasn't sure what the other missing chunk was from. Now I know that it's the 20 gigs that must be missing while the 40 gigs is the system stuff.

 

If you're still unable to account for some space, you might want to consider these:

System Restore
Hibernation File
Page File

If you're using Windows 7, you can check the size of system restore by clicking Start > right click Computer > properties > System Protection > Select your C: drive > Configure > look at the Current Usage. By default, Windows uses up to 15% or so of your C: space.

If you're using Vista, it's much harder to determine system restore properties. Follow this link for instructions on viewing and changing Vista's System Restore space allocation settings.

 

Just to muddle things even more, I remember a while back cloning a friend's hard drive (moved to bigger drive), and discovering their was a small hidden partition. It wasn't the recovery partition, but I can't recall what it was for.

 

Some really old Compaq desktops had their "bios" on a special hard drive partition. Computer would work without it but bios settings couldn't be changed unless partition was reinstalled and that software used.

 

run windirstat porable. It will show you a graphical layout of your hard drive, what the biggest files are and whats taking all the space up. It's also the portable version so you don't have to install it.

WinDirStat Portable | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB, portable and cloud drives

 

+1. It's quite a good idea to install it so you can keep an idea on space usage. Missing space is usually due to shadow copies holding backup backup/restore data which you can free up by deleting old restore points.