lost 20GB !!

I got a little careless today and wandered onto some ad ridden websites and started getting pop ups and IE7 windows were popping up when i had closed out of my browser. So i ran windows defender and it found some garbage, and i deleted it. Now I am missing 21GB of data! I don't even know what I am missing. Anyone know what may have happened or how i can retrieve that data? I am using Vista btw.

 

Maybe it was 21GB of spyware? I wouldn't worry about it if all your documents are safe and backed up like they should be.

 

Vista is really good at creating a lot of useless data i.e. millions of shadow copies, restore points, indexed files, caches, backups etc.
However, 21 GB is more than the entire original Vista install, so that's quite frightening. I can't really imagine how Vista could have created that much useless data.
But Calvin's right-> if all your data's safe, and everything is running fine, then don't lose too much sleep.

 

How do you know you are missing 21GB of data?

 

I don't think it was the ads that made you lose 21gb. When did you last check disk usage?

 

Yeah, now that i think about it the ads causing it does sound a little far fetched.

 

Well, if worse comes to worse do a restore point or format.

 

Er, your post doesn't make much sense.

How do you know you're missing 21GB of data, if you don't know what you're missing? What makes you think popups, or for that matter, Windows Defender, had anything to do with it?

Do you have more free disk space than you'd thought? Or... something else?

 

^^^ Most likely he noted the difference in the Properties tab of his HDD.

 

My guess is he actually lost 20GB of available disk space, and misread it to think he lost that much data. Many, many new Vista users complain about lost disc space.

 

20 GB is too much....5-8 GB is still acceptable....

Hey dude gives us some more information..maybe theres a misreading of free space...
Go to Disk management and see if some space is unallocated

 

i had 2 gb free, then afterwards i had 23 free. Found this from looking at C: drive under computer. My temp folder is only 32KB right now, could that have been emptied? So all that happened between losing all this data was i went to some ad-ridden sites and ran defender.

 

Take a look at my "where's my disk space" guide. It might not explain this specifically, but it might give some clues.

 

just to clear up, by "lost disk space" i mean that I only had 2GB free space on C: now I have 23GB free. I am hoping that one of my spyware scanners just deleted the temp folder (21GB is big, though).

 

But this is the OPPOSITE case. He didn't loose disk space, he actually gained it.

Gary

 

wow thats a rare case & u are kinda lucky hmmm

Hey check if your recovery file is still intact

 

One of the files my scanner found was modified at 10:02, the last restore point on my computer is 10:12.

 

1: when did you last check your free space before this?
2: What makes you think you lost anything other than temporary files?

 

I honestly don't what i lost. I think i lost temp files because nothing seems to be missing. All my songs are still there and my videos. These are the only things i would really notice missing. And i checked my free space the same day and the only thing that happened in between the loss of space was that i was on a sketchy site and i ran defender. that's the only unusual thing i did.

 

I suggest that with some of that newfound free space you install Firefox.

 

firefox is pretty much all i use save for a couple school related apps that only run on IE.

 

Is it possible that you performed a disc cleanup, or in some other way inadvertently deleted your system restore points? That easily could have freed up 20GB of space, and you wouldn't notice anything different.

 

odin that sounds very possible. I attempted to do a restore but the last restore point on file was last night, after I started getting pop-ups.

 

Yep, that's what happened then, almost certainly.

 

this is vista making shadow copies..which takes up 15% of your HD space

 

are shadow copies what vista uses for restore points?

 

yep!! (trying to make 10 characters)

 

You might want to re-read the inital post in this thread. He is not saying he is loosing disk space (which indeed might be vista's shadow copies) he is afraid he lost 20gb of data because now he actually has 20g MORE disk space!

The thread title is a tad misleading given all the other threads we have seen here about folks being confused when 20g of disk space disappears.

Gary

 

thanks for that clarification...if you restore your comp from a restore point..windows deletes the shadow copy files and it seems as if u may have lost data when you haven't...or maybe you did a clean up of files and it deleted the restore points

 

Yup that's what we've decided happened.

 

over the next few days it will seem as if you are losing HD space...vista will just be making new restore points...it will even out to what it was before

i was wondering the same thing before..check out this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=175520&highlight=18gb+lost