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So I am adding drives to the server, moving things around, really looking at what I have got taking up space.

1 of the drives is 1TB, and "My Computer" shows up being 99% full. WHen I actually go into the drive contents, I only see about 500GB of files and data, in a single folder.

I don't believe I am hiding any files.

Any way to............ find out? I'd love to have that space back. Defrag says it is 0% fragged.

So many variables...

Are you sure the drive is 1GB? Did you actually look at it prior to putting stuff on it?

How's it formatted? I had a drive once not show its max capacity because it wasn't in the right format.

Use your favourite programming language to exhaustively list and sum file sizes. Powershell or DOS script would work. Once you have the real file size sum and you also know the HDD capacity, some simple math should tell you how fucked you are. After that, I'd look at formatting, then perhaps run a diagnostic on the storage device.

Leisher wrote:So many variables...

Are you sure the drive is 1GB? Did you actually look at it prior to putting stuff on it?

How's it formatted? I had a drive once not show its max capacity because it wasn't in the right format.

It says 2.54GB of 931GB free. Unless it is just lying.

Formated NTFS.

Just verified. All hidden/system files are (supposedly) viewable. Only one folder with any data, 461GB, it is the server system backup files. I am missing about 300GB.

Run a diagnostic tool over it. I use Hard Disk Sentinel.

Running WinDirSTat right now.

GORDON wrote:Running WinDirSTat right now.

It shows the disk has 461GB on it.... but I am using it for the first time and I can't figure out what to do about it.

Administrative Tools/Disk management says it is a 931GB drive.

Hmmm.

If I had to bet I'd guess there's something wonky about the partitioning. Do you have another drive you can shift everything over to and just rebuild this drive from scratch?

Goddam I just launched a defrag for the fuck of it, and it almost sounds like metal grinding.

That's generally bad. Hmm. Wipe, reformat, and hope. Otherwise it might be fucked and you got a whole fuckload of bad sectors.

A better way to describe this sound is... the drive heads sound jangley. Not tight.

Malcolm wrote:That's generally bad. Hmm. Wipe, reformat, and hope. Otherwise it might be fucked and you got a whole fuckload of bad sectors.

"Bad sectors" was on my mind, next step was a chkdsk.

I have a 3TB drive waiting for an adaptor, when it gets here I will just swap out this particular drive.

Defrag finished, it now says I have 200MB free. I just lost another 2GB.

CHKDSK says 900+GB in disk space, zero errors.

Hmmm.

Really the only thing showing a low number is Windows Explorer in the computer overview.

This is a Windows Home Server.

The disk itself is called "Server Backup Disk." I never would have named it that, I wonder if the OS took it over when I installed the system, for its own use. If so, I wonder if it reserved all that space for its own use, and shows it as "unavailable."

I honestly don't know. I have only ever installed this OS once, and I was watching youtube videos as I did it, trying to figure out how.

Chkdsk blows. Get something better. Is reformatting a possibility?

Malcolm wrote:Chkdsk blows. Get something better. Is reformatting a possibility?

When I plug the 3TB in I will make it two partitions, copy all data over from that old drive onto one of the 1.5TB partitions, and then give it that drive letter. Then I will unplug the old drive and mess with it while it is no longer in the server, if I even care.... old 1TB drives aren't really worth much any more.

I rarely mess with this stuff, but there are a bunch of things that can affect what your computer sees in terms of HD space vs what it's supposed to be.

Have you googled "my PC only sees 500MB of my 3 TB HD + Windows 7"? (Or whatever the numbers are...)