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General discussion

missing 150 GB on a 300GB external HD

Nov 20, 2010 7:03AM PST

I took the hard drive out of my old computer and set it up as an external drive for my new computer. I reformatted the drive when I first started using it as an external. The problem is when I look at the external drive in My Computer, it says 54 GB free of 296 GB (or 242 GB used). When I highlight everything in the drive and click Properties, it only amounts to 88 GB. Why is there a 154 GB discrepancy and how can i fix it?
The external has a NTFS file system and the computer is running 64-bit windows 7. I store music, movies, pictures on the drive and also store the backups from my computer on it.
I have a basic understanding of computers but I?m no expert so keep that in mind when explaining anything. Thanks

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