PC File system borked, need ideas

[SurfD]

Ok, before i go for the final-solution type approach of formatting C: and re installing, figured I would ask for some advice here:

My C Drive (primary OS Drive, windows install and whatnot) is a 25 gig partition on my primary harddrive.
It currently has (with all hidden / system files shown and included), approx 8 gig of stuff on it.
However, Explorer (and pretty much every default windows tool) is reporting it as having only 5.5 gig of free space on it.

I REALLY want to know where the fuck my other 12 gig of space is...

I have tried Scandisk, Checkdisk to check for lose file clusters, get nothing. I have putzed around in safe mode, turned off and back on my virtual memory page file, nothing.

Defrag tells me that my drive is something like 60% fragmented, but litterally 75% of the files in the "fragmented" list dont even EXIST on my harrdrive.

The Disk Cleanup tool (the one that is supposed to tell you how much crap you have in various places and make suggestions to reuce drive clutter) freezes if i run it (but only on that drive).

I go to my Temporary Internet Files folder.  Select all files, delete them all (Shift+delete, no recyclebin shit here).  Then do a right-click -> properties check, and am told there are 1000 someodd files and 14 folders in my internet temp directory (takeing up 300+meg), but explorer, and even a dos prompt search shows the directory as Empty.

I am pretty much convinced that my NTFS file allocation table is just totally fucked, but I thought that kind of stuff just wasnt supposed to happen to NTFS partitions.

Any suggestions? Is it fubar? Are there any 3rd party programs i could give a spin without major worry that they will devour my harddrive?

[schild]

Sounds like me! Virus scan, sucka.

[Kitsune]

Wow, that's... pretty soundly fucked up.  Did the computer ever see the partition's full size, is this 13 gig thing a new situation or has it been so from the get-go?  If you're on an XP machine, do this:

Right-click 'My Computer'.
Select 'Manage'.
In the window that comes up, select Disk Management.
The disk management MMC plugin should contain the nitty-gritty about your drive allocations and partition status, and may have more useful information than you've been able to get from the other tools.

[Engels]

Did you check your C:\Windows\Temp\ directory? That one can gather stuff (although that's a lotta gigs).

[Trippy]

If you know Linux/Unix I'd recommend you burn a Linux "live" CD of some sort, boot off of that, and poke around and see what it thinks is on the drive. You could do something similiar with Windows if you had another drive/machine you could boot off of but you would need to be willing to risk getting that drive messed up if there's some sort of rootkit on your drive that's screwing stuff up.

[SurfD]

may see if i can plug the drive into someone elses machine and poke around that way.

in the meantime:

Is what i get when i go to C: Drive, have it set to show EVERYTHING (Hidden and system files) and select everything and do a Properties check.
This is what a file check claims is on my C: Drive. (approx 8 gigs of stuff)

meanwhile:

Is what i get when i Right click, properties on the drive itself.
according to this, im using nearly 19 gig worth of stuff.

Also, the computer management screen just tells me i have a 25gig healthy NTFS partition.

[SurfD]

RE: Kitsune

To the best of my knowledge, the computer has always seen the drive as the correct maximum size.  Issue here seems to be that it is some how no longer properly updateing the file allocation table, cause i can delete files, and they go away (i cant see them in Explorer, or from the DOS prompt) (i Shift+delete, almost never use recycle bin, and even then empty the Bin before I Defrag), but the PC is somehow still seeing them there anyway:
- defrag is reporting a big fragmented file in my currently Empty Temporary internet Files folder.
- going to said Temp Internet Files folder, deleting EVERYTHING in it, and then right click / Properties, comes back with 1000 files, 14 directories takeing up 300meg, even though there is NOTHING in the directory.

I have gone through every directory on my C Drive manually, and deleted garbage / temp files where i found them, and it STILL reports the drive as only having 5g or so free space.  Hell, I deleted 3 gig worth of hidden files left behind by a data recovery program and reported free space never changed.

(this issue is ONLY affecting the main "C" drive partiton on this drive also.  I deleted 200 meg worth of hidden files left behind by the same data recovery program on my E drive and free space reported updated perfectly fine.

[Murgos]

You did check to make sure that it's not your system restore file I hope?

[Mr_PeaCH]

You did check to make sure that it's not your system restore file I hope?

Yeah, reading through that was my initial guess as well.

[Trippy]

You did check to make sure that it's not your system restore file I hope?

Yeah, reading through that was my initial guess as well.

The max system restore files can take up is like 12% in Windows XP though that's a good suggestion for something to check.

[Lantyssa]

- defrag is reporting a big fragmented file in my currently Empty Temporary internet Files folder.
- going to said Temp Internet Files folder, deleting EVERYTHING in it, and then right click / Properties, comes back with 1000 files, 14 directories takeing up 300meg, even though there is NOTHING in the directory.

Do not trust what Explorer tells you about the Temp Internet Files.  I've seen the OS hide files from Explorer there.

Open a command prompt and go to the "C:\DOCUME~1\[username]\LOCALS~1\TEMPOR~1\" path.  Try a "dir /a", "dir /a /s" and other variations on dir to look for hidden/system/directories.

I know on Win2k machines a ton of files would be there, even if you cleaned it from IE or through Explorer.  I'm not seeing it with my XP machine, and I do not know if that is because they have changed things or because I have only run Mozilla and similar browsers.

[SurfD]

That did the trick, nuked the system restore files by turning system restore off and instantly gained back 10gig of free space.  Something must have been seriously borked since, at maximum, it should only have been taking up around 2.8gig worth of space.

Also got rid of those invisible files in my Temp drive.  didnt even think about using the /s switch on the Dir command when i was in there the first time.  Still cant account for a few directories, but 4 megs worth of invizible junk is much better then 300.

[Kitsune]

Wow, I've never encountered system restore going apeshit and taking half the drive before.  Of course, even at the default setting, it takes waaaaaaay too much drive space; I cranked mine down to 1%.  1.5 gigs is more than sufficient space for the restores to be taking, in my opinion.

[Ironwood]

Shadow Copies on Windows 2003 Server will fuck you up every time in this manner if you don't monitor it like a fucking hawk.

I've had servers run into 50mb free on the C: drive before I rescued them.  It's a real weakness.

[Kitsune]

Did the shadow copy exceed the maximum space setting, or did someone just forget to set a limit on it?  The former's troubling, the latter's just sort of funny.

[Ironwood]

The former.  It was apparently something to do with the backup making it's own copies when it was backing up the Shadow Copies.

Yes, it was bizarre.

[SurfD]

Im wondering if it is potentially possible that windows was scaling the size allowed for system restore backups based on the overall size of the drive, and disregarding the fact that i have it partitioned into 3 segments.

[Murgos]

Im wondering if it is potentially possible that windows was scaling the size allowed for system restore backups based on the overall size of the drive, and disregarding the fact that i have it partitioned into 3 segments.

I don't know but whenever I have space that's just 'missing' it's always been system restore.

[Yegolev]

I have had some luck using FAR to show me things that Explorer can't see or grab.  Had a couple files with no name once and could not delete them, but I was able to do it with FAR.

EDIT: http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/
Try a du.exe and see what happens.

[Strazos]

A bit of a necropost....

Something had been eating away at my C: partition for quite some time now. I am down to less than 400mb free space, even after a reboot.

The culprit? Apparently, I have something like a 4GB "C:\documents and settings\[name]\local settings" folder. For some reason, it was also hidden, and I had a hell of a time finding the thing.

Now...when I look inside, there is a LOT of crap in there....a lot.

Application Data
Temp
History
Temporary Internet Files

What of that is safe to nuke, generally? If I get rid of enough stuff, I can actually defrag the partition for the first time in about 2 years.

Edit: Actually, pretty much only Temp is taking up any appreciable amount of space. Is there anything in there that I need to make sure survives the burnination?

[stray]

Reboot, then delete the files inside Temp (just to make sure no active files are in there).

Also, I didn't read all of this thread, but do you know if System Restore is on? If it is, turn it off. It's pointless and wastes space.

[Strazos]

Yeah, I have it turned off.

Just from looking at it, a lot seem to be lots of misc. video clips and shit like that. Then there's java stuff, and other .tmp folders that, for the life of me, I have no idea what they do.

I just want to make sure I don't cripple something by accident.

[stray]

No, it's just a folder for cache and files when you install apps and such. Windows just doesn't clean up after itself. It's safe to delete those things.

[Mr_PeaCH]

Im wondering if it is potentially possible that windows was scaling the size allowed for system restore backups based on the overall size of the drive, and disregarding the fact that i have it partitioned into 3 segments.

I believe that is correct.  Good work.

[Murgos]

Reboot, then delete the files inside Temp (just to make sure no active files are in there).

Also, I didn't read all of this thread, but do you know if System Restore is on? If it is, turn it off. It's pointless and wastes space.

It does have a point.  I use it every now and that to revert to a previously known good state.  I dork around with my computer a lot though.  However, limiting it's usage is a perfectly fine thing to do.  There is no reason I can think of that you need a restore point for every day for the last year AND a restore point for every time you installed something new.

[Ironwood]

Guys, THIS is just the fucking business for Space Management.

Use it.

[Lantyssa]

It looks like an updated version of DiskData.  Awesome Splenda!  Thank you.

[Engels]

Wierd. Downloaded it, ran it, it couldn't read my main drive, which happens to be the D drive. Uninstalled it.

[Ironwood]

What do you mean, couldn't read it ?

It gives warnings for Secured folders and for Backup areas, but beyond that it just counts things....

I r Confused.

[Engels]

I dunno. I installed it, it launched just fine, but when I entered D:\ or D: or even D:\Windows\ as a path, I got an 'invalid directory' error. Trust me, I'd love for something like this to work. Not so much for home use, but for user desktop or server datashare managment in a work scenario, it'd be fab to have.

[Ironwood]

Which is exactly what I use it for...

Invalid Directory.  Hmmm.  Were that me, I'd run myself a wee disk check, just in case...

[Engels]

It won't see other drives on my system either. I thought it might be due to my raid 0 set up for my D drive, but it won't see a simple IDE drive either. Its rather odd.

[Ironwood]

It is indeed.  I use it on Work Desktops, SCSI Servers with multiple options and my Raided SATA Raptors at home.

I am concerned for you, young man.

Alternatively, it could simply be 'one of those things' that's part and parcel of 'Shit Happens' and we'll chalk it up to 'your loss'.

:)

[Yegolev]

Some of the numbers are off, or I'm not understanding them, but it is certainly a timesaver.  Sees all of my drives.

[Strazos]

I managed to free up even More space with this thing, thanks.

Also, I never quite realized exactly HOW sloppy Windows can be about cleaning up after itself.