750Gig Hard Drive shows full with only 315Gigs used

Question

I have a Win7 laptop with a 750Gig C: drive. It came partitioned with 714Gig usable from manufacturer. I installed programs, music files, etc up to 285 gigs. As of a few weeks ago it showed 285 Gigs. Two weeks of house guests later and it shows HD is full. I deleted some files but it still shows 652 Gigs on this drive while there are only 285 Gigs on drive. Relevant details:

1. I am Administrator on laptop and have fair knowledge of what I am doing.
2. I did not restore from backup, restore from mirror, upgrade HD's or anything else that would have touched the partition structure. Just daily use as imaging machine and web.
3. I have checked partitions under disk administrator - no change, still partitioned with 714Gigs usable.
4. Have looked through computer C drive by hand showing Hidden files and folders - no change.
5. I have used JDisk Report to double check - it shows I have only 285 Gigs on C drive.
6. I triple checked with TreeSize run as Administrator and it also shows 285 Gigs on C drive - yet Windows 7 still shows almost full.
7. I used Windows 7 Utilities to Check for Disk Errors, and Defragged the drive. No errors shown and no change after Defrag.

Solution 1

Use TreeSizeFree and run it as admin (this is very important to see hidden/system files and folders).

Now you see a nice overview of what is using the HDD space:

Solution 2

Check your system restore points. If they build up, you won't see them but they can eat a very large portion of the drive. You can configure your restore settings to control how much disk space they are allowed to use:

1. Click right on computer and select properties
2. Click System protection
3. Select configure
4. Choose max usage to limit how much drive space is allowed.

Comments

[Tycho91]

Does your C drive say 750 (or a little less gigs) or does the sticker on your laptop say 750gig? Perhaps there are unallocated partitions? Click the start button and type chkdsk and click chkdsk.exe. This will open drive management. Could you post a screenshot of that window? If there is any unallocated space, just allocate it and enjoy your extra space.

[Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007]

What's the actual make/model of your drive? What's shown in Windows' Disk Management? What size is reported in the BIOS?

[David Schwartz]

I think you're confusing hard drives with partitions. You can certainly have a 750GB hard drive that has a partition that is full with only 315GiB used. What does the disk manager say?

[Chris Kelly]

I should have been clear to begin with - the Drive has main partition and it is 714gigs of a 750gig drive. The entire drive shows as full although when looking through it with Windows Explorer it clearly is not. Unfortunately it is not a partition issue. I didn't restore a backup onto it, or do anything else Funky that would affect partitions.

[Franz Wong]

Did you empty the recycle bin after deleting all the junk?

[Ro-ee]

Please post an output of the chkdsk C: command. That would show how much space there should be (overall) and how much is really free. Without the /R and /F flags, chkdsk doesn’t change anything, so it’s safe.

[Chris Kelly]

Thank you for the idea - TreeSize is a nice little program. Unfortunately it only told me what windows explorer and a spreadsheet told me - I have a 714Gig Partition that windows shows only has 62.Gigs free (deleted stuff since first post). According to Windows Explorer, Treesize (run as administrator) and JDisk Report there is only 285.5Gigs of data on the disk. So... What is using up the other 366Gigs? Not in any hidden file, folder, or partition.

[magicandre1981]

@Chris Kelly run chkdsk /R /F, maybe the NTFS metadata are damaged and show you wrong data.

[user1696603]

this, and most other tools, won't show the actual disk consumption because of "Windows Side By Side" or winsxs, see superuser.com/questions/1/…

[gronostaj]

Please, don't do that. Make backups and make them on a separate drive. When something fails unexpectedly you'll be screwed without backups.

[Xen2050]

Once a file is really deleted (not just sent to a recycle bin) and the FileSystem marks it as deleted, then the space is now available for new files and is free space, no need to use any special program. If your FS isn't counting free space correctly then chkdsk should fix it. SDelete is only a secure delete tool, that overwrites files or free space

[Scott - Слава Україні]

You deleted your friend's backups and his system image file, and turned off his automatic backups?  I'm glad you're not my friend.

[Scott - Слава Україні]

But why would system restore points have eaten up 367 GB in two weeks?

[AbstractVoid]

Thanks! TreeSize was the only solution that showed me that "C:\System Volume Information" consumed too much space. Otherwise, this directory wasn't shown for me even when I enable showing of hidden files.