Windows XP - 25GB of phantom data on hard drive

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PsychoticPenguin

Gawd
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Jun 8, 2002
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When I select all the files on the drive it says I have 60GB worth of data on it, however if I right click on the drive in My Computer it says that there is 84.8GB in used data. There aren't any hidden files or folders on the drive, the files are compressed in drive cleanup, and the drive is freshly defragged used O&O. I don't know what this phantom 25GB is thats taking up space on my drive but its a lot of space that I'd really like to have access to. This drive isn't the system drive, its used solely for data storage, so I'm at a loss.

Anyone have any ideas what is going on?
 
Empty the Recycle Bin and then disable System Restore and re-enable it immediately afterwards. Could help considerably, as well as the info calebb just posted.
 
Thanks for the good info guys.

I don't even have System Restore enabled so I doubt it is that.

RECYCLER on the drive is empty (no hidden files and dir in cmd shows nothing)

Any idea to tell if my computer was being used as an ADS? I recently reinstalled windows (2 weeks ago) but have been running an up to date copy of AVG since the install and have a hard firewall in my router.

Open to any other suggestions. Thanks!
 
Open up Explorer, click Search (click past the stupid dog if you haven't disabled that too, probably you have), All Files and Folders, click More advanced options, make sure Search hidden files and folders is checked and then click What size is it? Specify size as at least 50MB and let it run through and see what it turns up. If you don't get the results you're looking for, go into Explorer's folder options and unhide system files and do that search again.

Also, TreeSize might give you some help here. There is a free version on this page that will give you the graphical view of your drive and hopefully you'll be able to spot that bloat quick.

Good luck...
 
if you use P2P software and are currently downloading a large file say... 25gb some download clients will assign 25gb of space to your hard disk even though 25gb is not being used as of yet.
 
Ugh... this is frustrating.

Currently downloading no files to this drive via P2P. Nothing is being written to it.

TreeSize tells me I have 60GB of used space also, not the 85GB explorer does.

A search of the drive turned up no unexpected hidden large files.

So, still got 25GB of ghost file on my drive. WTF.
 
Do you have the ability to move that 60GB off, or at least the majority of the actual user data just leaving behind Windows itself if possible and the apps? Might be a good idea to get around to doing a backup like, now if possible. You just never know what the hell is happening. :p

After that, then you can start resolving the issues you're having on a literal directory by directory basis if needed.
 
I just thought of something, and sometimes "thinking outside the box" can help, so bear with me.

Bring up a Command Prompt (Win+R, cmd then press Enter is pretty quick) and run:

chkdsk driveletter:

You're not doing any fixing so it shouldn't require a dismount of reboot. I'm interested to know the size of the allocation units, which should be the NTFS default of 4KB.

I ask this because I just remembered a client a few years ago that was doing video editing on a partition set aside for that activity. I had told him when he set the machine up that using 64KB NTFS allocation units would help with file system performance and it's true because video files are large blocks of contiguous data and 64KB units has been shown to be very efficient for such things.

It's not efficient for small stuff, however, like most systems use in daily operation. Sure enough, after he got some larger drives for the video work he decided to use that same drive - still partitioned and using the 64KB file system, just formatted clean - as a spare drive for data. At one point he called me complaining that he was missing out on a shitload of space because he only had about 10GB of actual stuff on it but for some reason it was showing 31GB of space being used.

Turned out he had saved tons and tons of tiny log files from doing video work and other stuff, most files were well under the 64KB allocation size. In fact, the majority were under 2KB, soooo... talk about inefficient storage, geezus.

We had him move the 10GB to a proper 4KB NTFS partition, redo the file system on the spare drive and move everything back, no more worries or wasted space.

Just a shot in the dark, mind you, but if for some reason your allocation units on that drive are way way off, that could account for a ton of wasted space.
 
nope. allocation size is 4096 bytes. I'm gonna have to do some mid-summer cleaning, but I should be able to squeeze the contents of the drive onto another one and do a clean format. Hopefully that will clear up any issues.

Thanks for the help!
 
The best way to check is always to just strip anything you can see off the drive and see what's left.

@bbz_Ghost

Would 64KB size be good for files 3MB+? I have a drive that is mostly music and currently it's using up 35GB for 29.5GB worth of data.

There also a picture folder with wallpapers in the 200KB+ range taking up 1.5GB though. Maybe the size saving of the mp3 files will get eaten up by the pic.
 
If you have some space that's primarily holding specific filesizes or files that rarely go below a specific limit (like mp3 files, video files, etc - files that are consistently large) then sure, changing the allocation unit can improve performance somewhat...

And that's a big "somewhat" there so I made sure you wouldn't miss it. This'll go too far off the thread topic fast so I'll cut it short:

If you have a partition where you store data files of any kind, be it mp3 files, video clips, whatever, as long as the files are consistently large (like say over 3MB in size and nothing is smaller) then yes you will get some minor improvements (only really measurable in benchmarking) in the filesystem and data access patterns.

Do I think its worth redoing the allocation/cluster size on every partition? Hell no, of course not, that's not what I'm suggesting. I just remembered a client that had excessive wasted space because of an improperly formatted partition in the past, that's all, so I posted it as a possible thing to check for considering the issues the OP is having.

Unless you're doing high end video work with gigs of recordings and constant editing of those files, 4KB allocation units/clusters is enough for anyone.
 
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