Hard drive claims space is being taken up

[Phlipmode]

hey guys,
i have an external hard drive that has worked fine...until now. recently i was moving a file from it to my internal hard drive. I then noticed that after i moved the file, my external said that no space had been freed. Being very annoyed by this i continued to examine the problem. I have come to a conclusion that, when i delete a file from the hard drive into the recycle bin and then empty my recycle bin, it gives me back the space. When i cut and paste a file to my internal hard drive...it does not give me back my space. When i delete a file that is too big for the recycle bin and I just permanently delete it, it does not give me back my space.

This all seems very odd to me and it's kinda out of my league.

On another note, I want to point my finger at norton antivirus. The unerase wizard continually will not open and one time after I cut and paste a file to my internal a norton error window popped up and said something along the lines of "attempting to repair log file". This may lead me to think that the log file is not recognizing the size change and recording it? (that is a shot in the dark guess)

Hopefully someone can lend out a helping hand. Thanks very much

-Chris

 

[IronDuke]

Norton moves it to another location. Otherwise it would not be able to unerase it.

 

[Phlipmode]

/edit- ok so i found out how to show the system information folder and the recycler folder. I checked out the sizes of each folder and the system volume information is like 50mb...and the recycler is like 425bytes. So w/ that said...does anyone know what i should do?

This makes me think even more so that I have an error w/ a log file and so when i delete something it doesn't get recorded, thus causing my hard drive to think nothing has happened.


ok..so anyone know this path name off the top of their head?...or how i would be able to locate it?...because it's not coming up when i view hidden files...and unerase isn't complying w/ me and will not run....

and just a question on the same topic....but why would unerase save files when i cut and paste them. I mean, I can definitely understand why it would save the file if i delete it....but cut it?!....****ing norton....

btw...thanks alot ironduke...i appreciate the help very much

 

[IronDuke]

Do you have more than 1 partition? I don't use Norton so that was a bit of a guess. Have a look under Norton and Symantec in Windows Explorer and see if there are any large directories containing unerase info.

Are you that tight for space to worry about the 50MB in Recycler?

Crap Cleaner will clear out a lot of rubbish and give you some more space (I know this is not the question you're asking )

 

[Tedster]

If your recycle bin is "protected" under norton, backed up files or deleted files won't really be deleted until the recycle bin is emptied. Norton protection is really a backup to a backup. I turned it off on my computer..

If your unerase is not working, your norton installation may be corrupted. I would reinstall it.

 

[IronDuke]

Good point Tedster. So long since I used Norton I'd fogotten about that.

 

[Phlipmode]

thanks guys...i reinstalled norton and then it let me use the unerase wizard...and i purged the files and then turned the wizard off...i now have my phantom 40gb back...

 

[Tedster]

glad to help.