Hard drive question

[blueonblack]

It wasn't empty at first but as soon as I found the hidden recycle.bin file I emptied the recycle bin on my desktop and even rebooted, but no change in the available space on the drive.

[Outlaw]

hm, there has to be something. In Disk Management, does it show any unallocated space (beside the ~100mb)?

This isn't really a partition and maybe a reason it doesn't show in Partition wizard?

[pcclan]

have you tried space sniffer ?

[blueonblack]

Originally Posted by Outlaw

hm, there has to be something. In Disk Management, does it show any unallocated space (beside the ~100mb)?

This isn't really a partition and maybe a reason it doesn't show in Partition wizard?

No unusual space unallocated, no. It IS a partition, I have a single 931.51GB partition on this 1TB drive.

Originally Posted by pcclan

have you tried space sniffer ?

I have not, but I will try that a little later this afternoon, thanks!

[xr4man]

holy crap, how did i not remember space sniffer. that's one of my favorite programs for finding large files or folders that i can get rid of.

[Outlaw]

Just checked out space sniffer, pretty cool program. You will have to let us know what you find. I can't say I have ever come across a rogue space hog of that size. Usually it was just preinstalled/hidden/recycle bin garbage taking a few gigs.

[Konrad]

Windows Search Index garbage can occupy a lot of space, usually "only" 10-15% of the total drive contents, but sometimes as high as 25-50%.

I would second the guess for hidden or unallocated partition areas, every system comes with a recovery HPA these days. And every system comes with many gigabytes of bundled "value" junkware which can be safely deleted.

The drive might store the virtual memory swap/cache on it; this could easily eat up dozens of gigabytes on a poorly configured or very busy system.

There's always some "slack" associated with the file system. Volumes with different file system parameters might store the same data in wildly different quantities of drive space ... although I thought Windows could report "actual" file sizes in the properties. Optimal parameters are sometimes dictated by the geometry (heads, cylinders, etc) peculiar to each physical HDD model.

[Outlaw]

I was in my external 2tb drive and was messing around. There was the $RECYCLE.BIN. It is using 21.5GB with 41Files, 10Folders.

Opening the folder, there is 5 different recycle bins.
Bin 1- Size 129bytes / Size on disk 4KB / 1 File
Bin 2- Size 16.6GB / Size on disk 16.6GB / 9 Files, 4 Folders
Bin 3- Size 4.98GB / Size on disk 4.98GB / 29 Files, 1 Folder
Bin 4- Size 129bytes / Size on disk 4KB / 1 File
Bin 5- Size 129bytes / Size on disk 4KB / 1 File

Before Delete:

After Delete:

I did physically delete the Recycle Bins in the $RECYCLE.BIN folder as there was nothing visible, even with all the hidden views on.

Not sure if it will help, but I thought I would share.
Outlaw

[blueonblack]

Originally Posted by Outlaw

I was in my external 2tb drive and was messing around. There was the $RECYCLE.BIN. It is using 21.5GB with 41Files, 10Folders.

Thanks! Seems mine is using 72GB with 17,584 files, 964 folders.

Weird thing is, when I open the hidden $RECYCLE.BIN folder all I see are fourteen icons I don't recognize, all labeled Recycle Bin, with the top and bottom ones having padlocks on them:

And when I open these every one of them contains the same thing, one single icon for a shortcut that I removed from my desktop (which should have nothing at all to do with this physical hard drive) that takes up a whopping 837 bytes!

As you can see, some of these have dates back from 2010. I don't really NEED the space this thing is taking up, but then we're not really about what we NEED around here, are we? The waste is pissing me off but I'll admit I'l leery of deleting what I don't understand. Anyone recognize these icons showing in this phantom recycle bin? Or know where the other 17,570 files went?

[Outlaw]

Looks like you found your missing 72gb.

I just deleted all of the recycle bins after posting my SS. I haven't had any issues since. I did NOT delete the folder. Using Vista/Win7, the lock just shows you will need Admin rights to modify/delete. if they are not using any of the storage, I would just leave them.

I believe you will get a new recycle bin when you plug into a new workstation.

I would at minimum just delete the bins that are using up all your storage.


The only thing I found related was http://www.sevenforums.com/general-d...cle-bin-2.html. They recommend backup/reformat/restore.