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General discussion

At loss for Gigabytes

Feb 19, 2004 1:35AM PST

I have a strange situation on hand. Recently my computer started slowing down, so I tried to reformat it, only to find out i couldn't. I didn't have an A drive, so i coudln't boot from there. So I tried to do a "fresh" install to windows xp home. Well i got that done, and i was under the impression that this would 'clean' or 'wipe out' the hard drive.. but i had found out that all the files were there. but just in folders.. nothing was installed.. but i still had all my old files there. So i began to delete them all.. After cleaning the hard drive (which ran great now) i had a few folders left.. The ones that were mandatory, and a few programs i had recently installed (such as winamp, and a game).. well the thing is, somewhere.... there is 16 gigs missing. and i cannot locate it anywhere. have a look at this picture-

http://img15.photobucket.com/albums/v46/Cosmoo/Side-by-side.jpg

on the left you will see the Properties for C drive, saying i've used 20.7 gigs. and on the right you will see when i go into the c drive, and select all the folders, and hit properties.. saying i've used 4.9 gigs, which seems more reasonable. i've gone into every single folder on the HD to try and find the missing 16 gigs, but i cannot find it.. i've tried running repair tools on the HD, but still no luck..

If anyone has any idea what i could do . please help Happy

thanks

Discussion is locked

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Re:At loss for Gigabytes
Feb 19, 2004 1:43AM PST

Two areas you need to explore are:

1. FILE SLACK.

The difference between a 1 byte file and the CLUSTER it takes to store, plus a directory entry.

2. The PAGING FILE

This may or may not be counted.

There's also the System Volume Information directory which you may not know of yet...

Bob

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Re:At loss for Gigabytes
Feb 19, 2004 2:11AM PST

"So I tried to do a "fresh" install to windows xp home. Well i got that done, and i was under the impression that this would 'clean' or 'wipe out' the hard drive.. but i had found out that all the files were there. but just in folders.. nothing was installed.. but i still had all my old files there."

You have done a reinstall of XP over itself.
That is why your old files are still there.

The XP CD is bootable if you want to do a clean install.
During the setup you have to observe the display and look for the option to delete your C Drive (if that is where XP was installed).
Then create a new C Drive and it will not ask you to format the HDD into NTFS.

This way you will erase all your existing data and gain back your entire HDD disk space.

Make sure you back up all your files before you do this.

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Re:Re:At loss for Gigabytes
Feb 19, 2004 3:18AM PST

i tried to del the C drive from booting up on the windows CD.. and it would not allow me.

and i do not know how to access those 2 sections in order to check my file stack & the other area..

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Research time.
Feb 19, 2004 3:26AM PST

"i do not know how to access those 2 sections in order to check my file stack & the other area.."

Goto http://www.google.com and type in a few questions:

WHAT IS FILE SLACK?

WHAT IS SYSTEM VOLUME INFORMATION?

Much more than I'm going to supply.

Bob

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Clean Install
Feb 19, 2004 3:28AM PST

We are assuming you have a full XP CD and not a restore disk.

Boot on the CD, select to install XP, when it asks to
what partition you want to install on, select the partition and select delete partition.
It takes 3 steps to delete the partition. It wants to
make sure you want to do it.

Then you will be back at the install screen. Pick the c: drive and install. It will ask to format as
NTFS, you can do a quick or regular.
Regular format will take a lot longer.

If at any time you have any crashes or blue screens or failure of any files to decompress. STOP and start all over.(Delete the partition and do over) 99% of the time these crashes are caused by a CDROM drive. In my experience. Change the CDRom and re-install.

Good Luck

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Re:Clean Install
Feb 19, 2004 3:32AM PST

i've tried deleting a partion from the retail win xp cd, but it doesn't allow me to do so, i get an error when i try to del it. something along the lines of "could not delete......"