Noobie who is losing disk capacity....heeelp!!!

[tariray]

ok, i dont have an incredibly fancy laptop but this laptop is pretty much my air and water.
it has a 40gig HDD partitioned into two drives your standart C and D
each of course with 20 gigs each.
now, when i click on c or D's properties it tells me it has a capacity of only 17gigs.
i've lost 6 gigs!!
i've defragged, cleaned, done a disk check and im really nervous about what is happenning cuz i download a lot of stuff and im hoping that i dont keep losing memory/space over time.
i only noticed that each drive only has 17gigs last weekend and i swear it wasnt like that last month, im hoping its the backup system keeping a lot of memory for some odd reason.
i cant explain myself cuz i dont know the terminology.
i have windows XP
andi recently burnt 8 gigs worth of stuff so i could free up disk space... only to find that i'vel ost 6 which now my computer doesnt even know it was there.
heelp meee please
....
just a generally computer illiterate person trying to know more about comps.
........
chomp chomp.

 

[JMMD]

It's probably just the way that disk space is calculated. My 80GB drive shows a capacity of 76.33GB.

 

[tariray]

no, it really isnt that.
i've seen the disk properties, it used to say capacity 20gigs, and now it says 17, a small discrepancy f 1 or 2 gigs i understand but it really wasnt like this to begin with

 

[Samstoned]

the way windows reports gb space and the way hard drive man. report are 2 diff things
the mbr will take up some space
the disc partition will use up space
the bigger the drive the more space is taken up by the service
so in the end on your drive its possible to lose about 2gb per drive
now we come to virtual memory or page file
if you have a lot of physical memory you dont need page file that is large
since you have one drive
check under my computer properties advanced performance advance
virtual memory change
remove from D drive if any
under c make both initial and max the same size
they say 1.5 time the physical is the best ,I would start with what the initial is
if you are using special virus programs they can store deleted stuff and you have to manual delete also check your system restore settings they also take up space

 

[tariray]

oh wow....
will do thanks!!!!
now lets see if that works... :hotbounce

 

[tariray]

nope didnt help
thanks anyway, did manage to fix up a few things anyway.

 

[ru_ready]

HI

try this site.... its a tiny tool called Disk Pie, it will graph out your hard drive and show you where, and what is being stored on the drive. its free and easy to use.

cheers

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,9396,00.asp

 

[tariray]

oh yay! :angel:
thanks will do