120G hard drive almost full but why?

Question

when i calculate program files and documents its only 95gb. My capacity is 111gb. I should have about 16gb free right??? says i only have 6 free. Whats going on where did the other 10gb go??

Answer 1

Instead of speculating...I am looking at it mathematically...

When a hard drive is marketed at 120GB it never really has 120gb. The math that is done is a little funny.

A 120gb hard drive has 120,000,000,000bytes on the drive which if you divide by 1000^3 will give you 120gb and that is what they are marketing it at. Unfortunately 1gb is a little more than 1000MB...and one MB is a little more than 1000kB, and of course 1kB is a little more than 1000 bytes.

Windows and everyone else that does the math the right way knows the above information is incorrect. Windows takes the same 120,000,000,000bytes and divides by 1024^3 (1073741824) to get the actual size of the drive....in this case it comes out to 111.758GB

In short, you never had those 18.242gb of space that was advertised. It is marketed at 120gb to make it easier for the consumer to read.

Hidden Files, your recycle bin, etc are all included with the 95gb that you are currently using. Windows Automatically takes into account these folders....for those who speculate that this is where you lost your space...shame on you...

The page file doesn't take up as much space on some computers...in fact on many computers with 1gb (1024mb) or more of RAM, the page file is actually turned off...so it is using NO space.

Answer 2

there could be alot of reasons to this
1. maybe your hard drive is not correctly partitioned. allowing space to be divided in to a partition that may not even be visible.
(to check this try going in to command prompt and try typing in fdisk or try using a software like partition magic that will show all space even if its not formatted to fix the problom)
2.may be although the file size is 95gb the space its taking on the drive is more, you can reduce this with a dfragmentation (leave it on once you are going to sleep as it usually takes a few hours to do 95GBZ)
3.maybe you have setup some software that has reserved some space for its operations, (maybe its a game with a vertual drive or some other thing wich may need some more vertual memory)
othervice you have calculated wrong.
good luck..

Answer 3

There is certain system files and processes that use disc space. For example your pagefile probably takes up at least a gig of that space you are "missing", I wouldn't stress over little space like that. You can try looking for an update of your BIOS. Also brings to the point, when you reboot your PC hit f2 (depending on BIOS) to access the BIOS, go into the drives section and see how much space your BIOS sees your HDD as. If its 120GB then your fine and Windows or some of your peripherals are sharing your HDD. Windows alone takes 3GB+ I believe..

Answer 4

There is certain system files and processes that use disc space. For example your pagefile probably takes up at least a gig of that space you are "missing", I wouldn't stress over little space like that. You can try looking for an update of your BIOS. Also brings to the point, when you reboot your PC hit f2 (depending on BIOS) to access the BIOS, go into the drives section and see how much space your BIOS sees your HDD as. If its 120GB then your fine and Windows or some of your peripherals are sharing your HDD. Windows alone takes 3GB+ I believe..

Answer 5

That's Windows Math... it just does not add up.

In general, space is used by the file system. There isn't anything that you can do about it.

The same goes for e-mailing a large file. If you read the instructions, it says that you can mail a file that is 10MB. But when you e-mail a huge file, it says TOO BIG. You see, a file grows by 30% when you e-mail it. This tells me that a maximum file that can be e-mailed is really 7.69MB and a file that is 7.7MB is TOO BIG.

Good luck with the New Math.... and Happy Computing!

Answer 6

Unless you have the option for showing "hidden files" turned on, when you do a "properties" on a folder it will not show you the space used by those hidden files. Windows, and many other programs, use hidden files to run. They are essential files needed to run, so they are "hidden" to make it harder for people to accidently delete or change those files (if you can't see it, you can't delete it). Those hidden system files could easily account for the missing 10gb of space on your hard drive. And they are files that you can NOT delete from your PC and still have it run.

Answer 7

It is quite difficult to speculate as to the exact reason for the missing space. I agree with the answers above, that it is probably due to hidden system files and folders...could just be your swap file, the system restore files or the recycle bin, for that matter.

To show hidden files and folders:
1. Open "My Computer"
2. Click on "Tools"
3. Click on "Folder Options"
4. Click on "View"
5. Click on the circle for "Show hidden files and folders"
6. Uncheck the "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)
7. Click okay and go to town.

For reviewing where the space has gone, I recommend WinDirStat. It is very useful.

Answer 8

you should attempt those: a million)purchase a 250gb no longer common stress and a flow cable for $a hundred and fifty at GameStop. 2)try deleting movies or movies you do no longer watch anymore, delete DLC for video games you do no longer play anymore, delete any arcade video games you do no longer play anymore, distinctly lots only delete any pointless data like issues you in no way use and don't plan on using. even however in case you're desperate for greater area then you truly could ought to delete some or all of those put in video games. in case you're speaking approximately put in Xbox 360 video games then you truly ought to delete them as possible play them with the disks (your Xbox 360 will sound louder however with the aid of fact the disk stress is now spinning back.) i desire this helps

Answer 9

didn't u forget the Windows folder as well as Documents and Settings folder???also hidden files such as pagefile.sys..

to have alook at hidden os files got to folder options->View tab
uncheck Hide Operating system files option...warning will be flagged press Yes...
and have a look at hidden file and all will add up to the shown size!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 10

You probably have some hidden files that didn't count when you calculated the files and doc.