Phantom data on a hard drive?

Question

I have a 200 GB SATA hard drive that I'm using as a secondary on Windows 7 Beta OS. It previously was a primary drive with windows XP and I haven't formatted it yet. I've moved all of the data that is valuable and irreplaceable that I can see.

When I select all of the folders and display the properties, it tells me that I have 1.26 in Data (which seems about right). However, when I go into My Computer and right click on the drive, it shows that I have 61.1 GB used.

I've lost track of what is on what drive. In disk management it displays only one partition, but there may have been two. I can't remember.

I realize that I could format it and "clear" the drive, however, I'm concerned that there really is 61 GB worth of data there that I'm unaware of and unable to see or transfer.

I've attempted to defrag the drive, but it's being a little bit quirky. It seems to start and then stop. Again, I think this is a win7 issue as it always defragged fine before. I think it's a Seagate drive. I've manually deleted many of the files including all the old XP files.

If I were to guess, I'd guess that it's a reporting problem in Windows 7 and that there isn't actually Data there, but I'm paranoid about formatting it just in case.

I'm not sure if any of this is relevant, but here are my pc specs:
MSI 770-C45
8 GB DDR ram
2.9 GHz AMD Athalon II (X2 245)
3 physical drives

I suspect this is unrelated, but I'll share anyway. When I was initially moving files, I'd move files from point A to point B and have significant discrepancies in the reported amounts of data. Sometimes B would report a lot more than the original source (and I wasn't creating multiple copies when asked). This happened with all of the drives that I was interacting with (4 total) not just the one that I'm asking about now.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

Hi ! There is a lot of data, particularly in system drives, that is hidden. Go to folder options and in view, tick show hidden files and folders, and also untick Hide operating system files option ... apply ... now see what you got on the drive ... There may be virtual memory alloted on the drive , which is stored on pagefile.sys ...., also memory of HDD alloted to recycle bin and system restore, which isnt visible....



Are you booting from that HDD itself? If yes, you cant see the memory alloted to system restore and recycle bin, though there will be their folders ...



In case you are connecting the HDD as slave and booting from other HDD, you can see all the files present, also the sizes alloted to sys restore and recycle bin ...



Contact in case you need assistance.

Answer 2

Your chum does not be responsive to what he's conversing approximately. once you delete a document (and empty it from the recycle bin) this is now loose area. in case you should make that records unrecoverable then use a application that wipes loose area. yet wiping loose area won't supply you anymore area.

Answer 3

the 61 G files is not your documents. it is used by system files.



you can format your HDD