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Missing HD Space??

N

nismohks

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 9, 2003
Messages
350
my H: is 15gb in size(partitioned from a 80gb) and used to be the boot drive(ie c:) till i installed a new HD and reinstalled Windwos XP Pro on the new one. Well after deleting my windows directory from H: and all the other *junk* i find that i am missing 4GB of space, after calculating how much data i have left in there. i sued Treesize Pro and found that System Volume Information was taking up around 4gb of data with around 3.6GB of System restore files. How can i delete it? :confused:
 
You can't delete System Volume Information. It's overhead from the NTFS file system and just something you have to deal with. To turn off System Restore, go to your System Properties and click the System Restore tab. You should be able to manage from there.
 
the system volume information folder i wa talking about is on my OTHER hd which used to have windows on it, but doesnt anymore. my boot windows XP is on separate HD
 
I have a question

Start > Run > (type) diskmgmnt.msc > which partition on which drive is listed as the System Partition?
 
its diskmgmt.msc and these are the drives:

C: Healthy (System)
D: Healthy
E: Healthy
H: Healthy (Active) <-- not too sure waht active is. i Assumed that it was the first partition on the other other HD
I: Healthy
J: Healthy

CDE drive is one HD and the HIJ is another HD.(dont ask why i partitioned them to that many partitions)

I used to use the HIJ(maxtor 80gb) as the only HD and was a boot HD which is why windows was installed on H:, howver after buying another HD, the CDE (Seagate 160) i installed windows xp on its C: without deleting the one on H: and just continued using the system. now i have found out that since i didnt *properly* uninstall windows from H; there are still some stupid system files which i cannt delete that is on it.
 
active means that the partition is marked as bootable (which at one point it was)

I was concerned that when you installed the new OS, that the system partition was left on the H partition Discussed here though considering the assigned letters that was unlikely, but a breakout of your partitions to drives confirmed that

another question is are the I & J partitions Primary partitions or in an extended partition as logical drives?
(there would be a green border to the extended partition see the key at the bottom left)
 
C: Healthy (System) Primary
D: Healthy Extended Logical
E: Healthy Extended Logical
H: Healthy (Active) Primary
I: Healthy Extended Logical
J: Healthy Extended Logical


I and J are grouped in the same Extended Partition(green border around both boxes)
 
btw when i reinstalled the OS, im pretty sure my old HD(one with the current H:) was out of the pc, so the NEW OS (on the current c:) SHOULD have nothing to do with the other partition. On H: i have already deleted the whole windows folders, applications etc. only my data is on it such as mp3s, movies, etc. so there are no more visible system files left on it.

:confused:
 
well that explains the divergence between your intial description of the install and how it ended up, it was fortunate you pulled the old drive ;)
(see link above about how that works and how to fix it if it ever does happen)

measuring space inside a partition is problematic, there are several hidden structures you werent able to delete, there is of course the now isolated restores, which you cant directly remove from the new install, as well as the pagefile, the Master File Table and its Mirror, and probably other exclusively locked or hidden files (though they wouldnt be locked from a parallel install only from inside the OS of origin)

the problem is, that the easy way to do that would be to delete the partition
something you dont want to do, since there is an extended partition attached to it
youd loose access to the logical drives in the extended partition

the ideal solution is to transfer the data off and start over on that drive
that would recover any isolated file structures
and avoid Extended Partitions till your forced to employ them

you are allowed 4 Primary Partitions per HDD or 3 Primary Partitions and One Extended Partition and subsequent logical drives per HDD, under Windows, without resorting to a 3rd party boot manager.

Just for review, there is filesystem overhead, and there is the decimal to binary conversion
between those, you typically loose 10% of your capacity from what is stated on the HDD lable to what is reported in DiskManagement\MyComputer\Windows Explorer
 
is there a way to tell for sure that i DID unplug the old HD before i installed the OS on the other? and how come it would make a difference since im installing the OS onto another HD even IF my old HD was still conected. BTW, i am positive that the new HD would be in the MASTER when i reinstalled the OS.


waht would happen if i deleted the partition and created a new one in its place? would the other extended aprtitions still work? there is 100+GB on that disc which is not easy to shift to antoher palce temporarily.. :eek:


...btw thanx for all your help so far :D
 
the OS would detect the previous installation and rewrite the boot.ini as a dual boot
and not write the ntldr to the new HDD (NT as in NTFS, ldr as in Loader) its the bootstrap, see that link above for more info and links specifically inside the boot process

yes if you deleted the primary partition the "chain" of partition tables would be broken
the partition table for the primary points to a next location for the partition table of the extended partition, which points to a next location of the logical drives, and all those reference the Master File Tables which keep track of where the data is, so break the chain and loose access through the OS, data recovery aps, directly scan the sectors, and would be able to retreive them, and there are aps like Disk Patch that basically go in a rebuild the tables, but dont do that :p

If you have to, just use the partition as is, you could reinstall to it, or use it for data
but the Missing space? well... we havent definitively determined what that is
as the list I provided wouldnt account for nearly that much if we exclude the restores, but with them its likely accurate, an OS reinstall would probably overwrite those, and you could reformat the partition, without breaking the chain as well, and that might recover the space

however, youd still have an extended partition with logical drives, which limits your future options somewhat, but it might be liveable, the danger is not knowing the consequences
now that you do you should be OK

Remember the leading cause of data loss isnt hardware failure
its pilot error ;)
 
all those stupid folders( i think they are System restore points) are clogging up my hard drive! am able to just delete them? I use TreeSize Pro, and when i right click a folder, it allows me to delete
 
yup they are
you might even be able to access them from the parallel install after all
How to Gain Access to the System Volume Information Folder
There is a System Volume Information folder on every partition on your computer. You might need to gain access to this folder for troubleshooting purposes
Click to expand...
as they seem to be OS independent (meaning they arent tied to a particular install of origin, moving with disks if you for instance import a disk)

I dont think there would be much to worry about by just deleting them with Tree Size Pro either, but Id try the Microsoft way first :p
might be permissions issues in NTFS

PS sorry I wasnt up to speed on those, I use W2K
 
Thanx a Lot Ice Czar for your help!. i have now reclaimed my missing HD SPace!!! :D :D

Now i just need to get rid of that exteneded partition crap lol.. o well. that can wait till i go to a LAN, then i can traansferr all my crap of my HD to someone elses then a full format of the drive!


btw, can i just shift all the data off the drive, then go to disk management to delete all three partitions, and just create new ones? will it get rid of the Active thing and the extened partition?
 
delete backwards to the creation
so start with the logical drives, then the extended partition then the primary
that used to be quasi important with fdisk
but not so much anymore with Disk Management, but what the hell keep up the tradition

Might I advice you to read this however
Corruption 101
its loacted in the FAQ with alot of others, might save you some grief
Id recommend a test at that LAN and run a comparitive checksum to verify the test files
after being transfered over and back again before you deep six the originals ;)

and I compiled that the hard way, through data loss :p
 
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