Korean Job Discussion Forums

[cellphone]

Have a partition on a large 160gb hard drive. Spare partition 17gb. Loaded it up with numerous download over time. Then burned almost all of it onto dvd-r's. Well I've left about 4.8 (or ~5gb) on there. However, apparently it says that 7gb is taken up.

Like this:

Partition size: 17gb
Free space: 10gb

5 of those gigabytes are accounted for. That means 2 gb's are taken up somehow. (There is no OS installed on that partition).

Any guesses on what it is, how to get it back? I did defrag on that partition a few times.

[hypnotist]

What OS, what filesystem, and (assuming an MS OS) what does running chkdsk on it say?

[Demophobe]

NTFS file systems (the default on WinXP) will use a portion of the hard drive for system space. It won't show up in a WinXP defrag, but will with 3rd party software such as Diskeeper.

Windows will hold this space, but will dole it out as programs or files deem it necessary. It's not lost at all, so no big deal. Typically, the "reserved system space" (Master File Table) is anywhere from 12 to 50% of a drive, depending on it's volume.

Microsoft page is here.

[SuperHero]

If you are using Norton then you will have a norton protected trashcan. rightclick on it and empty. after you do that right click on it again and empty norton protected files. Your space will clear up.

[cellphone]

first thanks to hypnotist and demophobe for their replies and info.

And for superhero, this is the second time i recall your reply gave the direct answer (previous one was for firefox browser). gj.

Strange thing is Norton never displayed a list of what files exactly were being protected - just gave an option of "purge all," and that's what I did. (I wonder just what was "Norton" protecting?) Now I just hope they weren't important system data files as I purged all three (c: e: & g: ).... Oh well..... Anyways, it cleared up like 1.8gb on that spare partition (that missing space), and a bunch on my other bigger drives/partitions.

[Wangja]

A related subject: can the partition size be changed? Or even better, can a partition be reomved?

That is, can it be changed or removed without starting from scratch?

[hypnotist]

[cellphone]

Resize/remove partitions: yah I think it can be easily done with Partition Magic 8.0, never did it but I saw the options in the menu for it and looked easy. Actually I think it was Demophobe that hooked me up with that, but don't remember that was a long while back like early last summer. But I think he was the one. Or you can download a trial copy of it I suppose.

[Wangja]

Thanks a lot - I'll give that a try.

(All my data is backed up on an external hard drive)

Edit: wow - 69.95 USD!