Disappearing Files? Explorer Reporting Incorrect Free Disk Space?

[rayzoredge 2]

I hate to have to ask, but why is Windows Explorer being dumb?Just the other night I copied 12GB worth of video files from my brother (Futurama episodes). It happened to be my last 12GB, leaving my 500GB external hard drive with less than 300MB of free space. I turned the hard drive off, packed up, and left for home.Booting up the same hard drive to search for its contents, I was surprised to have about 13GB of free disk space left on the hard drive. I figured that maybe my brother actually said that he was going to copy those episodes but forgot to, so I did my usual gig and tried copying a 700MB file to it. Windows Explorer told me that there wasn't enough space. I looked all over the hard drive for these new Futurama episodes but to no avail. There was nothing different about my drive, content-wise.I'm sure you can see the confused look on my face right about now.Aside from deeming a M$ product inferior and blame it on bad coding, how would I go about actually being able to see my missing files and tell Explorer that it's stupid and should be telling me what the real free space amount should be? I'm just now setting ScanDisk to run on next boot-up, which will be fun... considering how slow it is. (By the way, can anyone recommend other software that does what ScanDisk does, but better, and possibly more? Like how Diskeeper is vastly better than M$'s Disk Defragmenter?) ANY answers or suggestions OTHER than blaming it on the FAT32 filesystem would be awesome, considering the drive is NTFS. Thanks!

[kobra500 1]

It's probably something slightly wrong with your hard drive, more likely than windows explorer. but it could be a bug, microsoft isn't perfect. definately google this problem you'd be suprised what you can find and also contact microsoft. I'm sure they'll be willing to help

[darkpsy 0]

This problem can be caused by any number of things:

- Hidden files on the drive
- Corrupt file allocation table
- Bad sectors on the hard drive

To start off, run chkdsk on the external hard drive. It may find errors on the hard drive and repair them automatically. There are also other disk tools you can try. Check http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287 for your hard drive manufacturer.

Edited November 3, 2008 by darkpsy (see edit history)

[rayzoredge 2]

Thanks for the help guys.I followed my gut feeling with using CHKDSK and after hours of scanning, ScanDisk found and organized the orphaned files. Just didn't log into reply in this topic... consider the case closed.Now, here's a good question: What would cause files to behave this way, to be "orphaned?"

[rvalkass 5]

Just the other night I copied 12GB worth of video files from my brother (Futurama episodes). It happened to be my last 12GB, leaving my 500GB external hard drive with less than 300MB of free space. I turned the hard drive off, packed up, and left for home.

Doing that too quickly. When the dialog disappears from the screen, the files are not yet actually finished copying. This is why you need to right click the drive and select "Safely Remove" before pulling the plug. If the files were mostly copied, but not completed, then the data might be on the drive and not accessible. That's the only reason I can think of at the moment.

[iGuest 3]

Disappearing and reappering disk space in Windows XP SP2Disappearing Files? Explorer Reporting Incorrect Free Disk Space?

Here's a twist on the disappearing disk space theme.  Left unattended and doing nothing, my system drive (G: in my case) will completely fill up in about 8hours.  The lost space is recovered if I reboot.

Right clicking on the drive in the Windows Explorer Folders pane and selecting 'Properties' will show the depleted drive space, as I write this is 46.1GB used and 6.97Gb free.  The drive is some 53Gb and starts out with over half free.  However, Selecting all files and folders from the root in the other pane and choosing Properties reports only 21.8Gb in use.

After refreshing the panes, there is little evidence of any file size increases.

At first I though it was avirus, but F-Secure does not report anything suspicious, and neither does Trends online scanner.

Disconnecting from the Internet does not make a difference, running Disk Cleanup and CHKDSK does not resolve the problem.

The only resolution is to reboot, which resets the used and free space, however it is steadily consumed again during use.

Any help would be appreciated.

[iGuest 3]

any idea where my deleted items have gone please?Disappearing Files? Explorer Reporting Incorrect Free Disk Space?

Hello everybody, just found your site while trying to find out whatMight have happened to items I deleted from Outlook Express yesterday.My computer is a six year old Sony Vaio laptop,and the C drive only has18GB,it was down to 15% free space so I decided to do some spring (ok,IKnow it's not spring yet...) cleaning and clear out my inbox. ITransferred hundreds of the biggest emails,those with attachments,to aMemory stick and after each transfer I deleted the item. I managed toShift about 750mb so was hoping that the free space on the C drive would increase but I got a warning that the space was nearly goneAltogether.I then tried to empty the deleted items folder but theComputer froze,for quite a while,and rather stupidly I switched it offWith the on/off button and re-booted. I was still being told that thereWas very little space left on C drive and after numerous applications of drive cleaner,CC cleaner and defragging I still only have 3% spaceLeft,and it seems that the items are still on the drive somewhere,but IDon't know where.Can anyone please tell me how to find them and disposeOf them?,I was hoping to free up more space and ended up with less,IDaresay it didn't help that I didn't switch the computer off properlyBut I still need to sort this out,any helpful suggestions gratefullyReceived!,many thanks,Steven.

-question by Steven Liska