Hard Drive appears full when not full

Question

Hello, My hard drive appears full on disk properties and when I try to add more data it states the drive is full yet if I goto each folder on the drive the sum of their volumes does not equal even close to the total size of the drive. (7 gigs used of 30).  I called dell and they were useless they told me to format the drive.   thanks

DyL · Answer

hi, may i know what os do you have on your system? basically, windows was insalled on the smaller partition of the hd that's why when you try to install other softwares it will say the hd is full, & the only solution for that is to reformat the hd so that windows will be installed on the proper partition.

DyL

DCSE Desktops & Portables ID: 362529

thaboli · Answer

thanks for the reply but my operating system is installed in a partition that is 20 gigs in size and that is relatively empty. Can I just format the patition that is involved and not have to reformat the partition with the os.

I am running xp

thanks

DyL · Answer

unfortunately you can't just format the involved partition, because you actually have to repartition the hd.

leduke30 · Answer

Try running Disk Cleanup, Scandisk w/ Automatically Fix Errors and then Defrag the drive. Also got to Control Panel/Internet Options and Click the Delete Files Button on the General page. As a last effort, if you feel you need to, Click the Delete Cookies Button. That will clean out your Temporary Internet files of all the garbage and start you over. It is a less drastic measure than a complete reformat. Cookies and Temporary Internet files can really eat up harddrive space as a 2k file can eat up a whole File Allocation unit of from 8-32kb, depending on how large the drive is in total capacity. To slow this down considerably, in Internet Options /Advanced, there is a line near the bottom of the page 'Empty Temporary Internet folder when the browser closes'. If you checkmark that, it will dump all the junk files and not bother the cookies stored there. I have done that on every computer I have owned and those I still have. Why that is not a Default Setting I will never understand. Message Edited by leduke30 on 04-07-2004 09:54 PM

leduke30 · Answer

There is one other thing you can try; run     Scandisk/AutoFix  C:      in DOS using a W98 Boot Disk to get to an A:\Prompt and typing and entering that command. I have noticed that it is more effective in correcting an erroneous Free Space Count-which may be your problem- than the version that runs when up under Windows. It is old-fashioned, but it works. I do it every couple of days as insurance.

thaboli · Answer

Thanks for the replies.  I pretty much did what you had recommended but there was no immediate effect.  Now gradually space is opening up on my hard drive.  I have no Idea why   rav

Storage, Drives & Media

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