Why does my C drive show incorrect used space?

[roymaisey]

I have a Vaio NW11S/S. It came with Vista (on a 320GB disc) but I upgraded to Windows 7 using the Sony upgrade kit. I have uninstalled some of the preinstalled applications to free up space as I have no use for them. I did a disc cleanup and defragmented the disk. I changed "folder options" to show hidden files and to show all extensions. I then totalled up all folders on disc C, which comes to 19.7GB. When doing a "properties" check on disc C, it shows used space as being 62.1GB and free space as being 225GB. I included all files and folders shown against disc C to calculate the total size of folders. The restore partition is separate from disc C partition so that has nothing to do with it. Why is it showing used space as being 62.1GB when the total of the folders/files is less than 20GB? I want to split the C partition into two partitions and I felt that 50GB would have been fine for the Operating System and Programmes and I would have used the balance for data storage but it looks like a lot of space is being wasted somehow on C drive..I would be grateful for some advice on this.

[Thalamus. · Accepted solution]

Hi roymaisey

To start with your 320GB HDD is actally 298GB the difference in hard drive size is partly due to the different way manufactures and Microsoft report the sizes..

Manufacturers use the SI scale for example 1KB = 1000 bytes

Microsoft, ie windows XP/Vista/7, use the binary, for example 1KB = 1024 bytes

Therefore manufactures 320 GB hard drive = 298,000,000,000 bytes.

Whereas MS 320 GB hard drive = 298 GB

example 320GB manufactures size converted to MS binary scale...

320Gb = 320,000,000,000

/1024 = 312500000 kilobytes
/1024 = 305176 megabytes
/1024 = 298 Gigabytes

Also further missing HDD space could be due to the space used by Windows's System Restore..

You can check what space is being used and allocated to shadow storage by follow this guide..

Click Start, then click All programs followed by Accessories.

In Accessories Right Click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.

In the Command Prompt window type: vssadmin list shadowstorage and then click Enter

Hopefully you should see..

Used Shadow Copy Storage space:

Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space:

Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space:

[roymaisey]

Hi Thalamus

Many thanks for your reply.The Shadow Copy Storage Space used was 39.532GB so that explains the missing 40GB! I deleted all the restore points and set the space limit to 5% rather than the 15% it was set to.My C drive now shows used space as 22Gb.

I have another problem and would be very grateful for your help. After clean installing Windows 7on this machine and installing various original(Vista)and updated drivers, plus Windows 7 drivers including SFEP, Sony Shared Library, Vaio Event Service and Setting Utility Series, the mute key (the one next to the WEB key, does not work. In fact , after pressing this switch, the Fn along with F2, F3, F4, F5 and F6 stop working. The only way I can get these Fn keys to work is to re-install all the aforementioned drivers again. What drivers are necessary and in what order must they be installed to get all the special function keys and the mute switch to work properly.

Regards

Roy Maisey