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Thread ID: 87181 2008-02-11 10:24:00 'Hidden Partitions' on my com's HDD? gza (13233) Press F1
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639499 2008-02-11 10:24:00 In my computer I have an 80GB HDD that is partitioned C, D, E, F, G. The C drive is the Active drive & the rest are Logical drives in an extended partition,of course. All of the Available,Used & Free space allocations for each drive are correct & add up to 75GB total.

Today when defraging all drives I noticed that 'D' drive shows as having 1.62Gb of "contiguous files stored in it,leaving 77% free space, yet shows nothing stored there when I look @ it in 'My Computer'. I deleted everything from it earlier in the week.

Also, in defrag, 'E' drive is showing a group of 'Unmovable Files'. I'm sure that this group of Unmovable Files were not there when I defragged last week. I loaded 16GB of music files from DVD storage into this drive today & know that there is not an OS or part thereof amongst these music files.Only the music collection shows in 'My Computer 'E' drive, that's all I want to be in there.
There is a discrepency of 1.3GB in the space allocations on this drive even though in 'My Computer, Win Disk Management & Win Defrag', the Space Available, Used & Free are the same, i.e. 21.9GB available, 17.48GB used, 4.42GB free. When I check the size of the music collection in 'E' drive using 'My Computer' it shows as 16.2GB. Adding the 4.42 free space gives 20.62GB in use.To my reckoning that's 1.3GB amiss & I wondered if this could be where the Unmovable Files are stored.
Could there be a hidden partition in 'E' drive', remnants of a dual boot I had, left behind when I deleted everything out of it? Tucked away when I resized E or D drives using either Norton partition Magic8 or Win.Disk Management? ( I don't have a choice of two OS's @ Boot-Up). If so, how can I access and remove it, them, both of the above mentioned???
I'll google that question shortly.
The fact that its in there isn't agro as it's not causing a problem. Just using the space & doing nothing. Inaccessable. As for the 'D' drive,...well....( ? ), its showing a blank window as I said......

Do I have to delete & reformat 'D' & 'E' partitions to clear them ot the things I mentioned?
Wouldn't be a major hassle but reloading the music will take about 4hours, unless you can loan me a magic wand. : )

Any ideas on the above apprecciated, ta.


HP Compaq Presario S3010AN
WXP Pro SP2
768MB DDR 266
80GB WDC HDD


Methinx: I've been taught illogical.
gza (13233)
639500 2008-02-11 10:51:00 Get this version 1.4, don't get the new one, you can use this to delete virtually anything so be careful or you could trash your computer, you can switch the delete off in options until you are sure, you will be able to see what is in all the partitions:

www.softpedia.com
zqwerty (97)
639501 2008-02-11 11:54:00 zqwerty, thanks. that looks interesting. I've downloaded the prog & will have a look into it. I'd love to see into yhe partitions. Ta gza (13233)
639502 2008-02-11 12:34:00 D drive shows 3 sections and is labeled D:\Recycler. 17 Folders & 30 files.The bytes total in the 3 sections adds up to the 1.63GB shown in Defrag.As for the E drive, its a mass of coloured rectangles much like a Modigliani painting, each with the name of a music folder attached to it.This will be fun tracking down the block of Green Unmovables!
'D' drive I will wipe & reformat. As for 'E' drive....?...I will have to be careful and read the instructions
cheers
gza (13233)
639503 2008-02-11 14:07:00 Yep. After using Spacemonger to reveal the file/folder contents & to delete a lot of them from the 'D' drive, I felt confident that I could safely wipe/format the drive with Win.Disk Management,losing nothing of importance.
With 'E' drive showing 455 Folders containing 7,949 Files,finding something to delete won't be so easy.
There's no rush.
Good stuff,indeed.
gza (13233)
639504 2008-02-11 19:03:00 You can delete individual files and folders using Space Monger, right click for options. zqwerty (97)
639505 2008-02-13 23:03:00 Yep, I did that thanks.
I added a 20Gb slave to the com and sent the music collection there, thus being able to see if there were any OS files in it; as expected, there weren't any.
Using Spacemonger to reveal the hidden content of 'E' drive as being a System backup of a failing slave drive I had removed from computer 3-4 weeks back, allowed me to clean-format the 'E' drive and regain the lost disk space; 3GB total in all from 'D' and 'E' ,not a lot these days but not much smaller than the 4GB 'Bigfoot' HDD that was in the first com I had 4 years ago.
I'm pleased to have the free space again.
For me, Spacemonger worked 100%.
Beauty.
gza (13233)
639506 2008-02-13 23:18:00 Dont forget, system restore uses space on each monitored partition as well as the recycle bin! SolMiester (139)
639507 2008-02-13 23:44:00 Dont forget, system restore uses space on each monitored partition as well as the recycle bin!

And disable hibernation if you don't use it - that uses a fair chuck on the C: drive.

Edit - 2000th post! :D Good times.
wratterus (105)
639508 2008-02-14 06:35:00 Dont forget, system restore uses space on each monitored partition as well as the recycle bin!

Emptying your recycle bin does wonders for getting rid of gigs of 'mysterious' files!

For multiple drives, by default in XP each one has a recycle bin up to 10% unless you configure their properties independently. To maximise space I switch mine off on drives I'm using for backup files and images.
wiselark (12849)
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