HDD not clearing data

S

Shinigami

Veteran X
One of my friends was uninstalling some things the other day so he could install a new game. Yet he discovered, after deleted several gigs worth of data, that his hdd wasn't freeing any space. Has anyone ever had this problem and/or know how to deal with it?

He's running windows xp pro. He's tried all the obvious things such as restarting and crap. He also lives about 150 miles away from me, so I can't mess with his PC myself.
 
Oh, and clear out temp files, which can be found at

ROOTDRIVE:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Temp
 
Is he running a FAT32 or an NTFS file system? FAT32 notoriously reports an incorrect amount of free space. To fix it, he would need to run scandisk (don't need to do the full scan). If it's NTFS, tell him to empty the recycle bin. :p
 
It's NTFS. Sorry I should have specified. The recycling bin is disabled and clearing temp files does not help him free up the space from deleted files elsewhere. OtakuMark, you're insulting my intelligence.

Later this evening I thought about the way NTFS deals with deleting and had the idea to defrag. Now he can delete things to clear up space, but the space he should have gained previously is still lost. I'm guessing it's probably gone till he formats the file system again.
 
Shinigami said:
It's NTFS. Sorry I should have specified. The recycling bin is disabled and clearing temp files does not help him free up the space from deleted files elsewhere. OtakuMark, you're insulting my intelligence.

Later this evening I thought about the way NTFS deals with deleting and had the idea to defrag. Now he can delete things to clear up space, but the space he should have gained previously is still lost. I'm guessing it's probably gone till he formats the file system again.
Click to expand...
I suppose so, just trying to help. Kyrie, Ignis Divine, Shinigami, eleison. :(
 
does he have norton utils installed? if so, tell him to empty out the norton protected files in his recycling bin
 
Check system restore...on the root drive (or whatever drive these were installed on) there is a folder called "System Volume Information"...check its size...it could be backing up these programs.

*note* you may need to assign permissions on the folder to allow you to view it...by default you don't have permission in XP.
 
Shinigami said:
It's NTFS. Sorry I should have specified. The recycling bin is disabled and clearing temp files does not help him free up the space from deleted files elsewhere. OtakuMark, you're insulting my intelligence.

Later this evening I thought about the way NTFS deals with deleting and had the idea to defrag. Now he can delete things to clear up space, but the space he should have gained previously is still lost. I'm guessing it's probably gone till he formats the file system again.
Click to expand...
I highly doubt it. I've been using NTFS for 5 years now and have never had a problem like that. Have him make sure show system/hidden files is on, then have him select all and right click in the root directory and hit properties. The difference should approximately be whatever the system restore setting is on (since you don't have access to that folder by default and can't get the properties).

Even with FAT32 it was never lost. The hard drive would still write to the areas that were not showing up as free space; and scandisk would always fix it, if temporarily.
 
I've never had such a problem either, but that doesn't really help. He already told me that all his files and directories combined on that drive are a lot less than what the drive properties show.

Maybe it will write over those areas. I'll haveta wait till I talk to him again to find out.
 
Are you sure he had the options set to view hidden/system files before he selected all his files and dirs?
 
Not sure, but I think he knows better. I still haven't been able to talk with him since Saturday. I think he might be dead or something.
 
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