Incorrect hard drive capacity

C

Castle

New Member
One thing that puzzles me is that my laptop's hard disk drive free space differs from time to time. My hard drive total size is 40GB. When I turn on my laptop it was 17GB of free space available but after using it for an hour it was less than 10GB of free space available. I am very sure I have not installed anything or saving a large program into the hard drive. I am just surfing as usual.

Well that was puzzle number 1.

It is even more ridiculous sometime later my hard drive avaliable free space suddenly increase by a few GB i.e. close to the originally freely avaliable of hard disk space.

Anyone can offer the best solution for me? I have already reinstalled a fresh OS onto the simliar hard drive but still no diff...
 
Now that is really odd, have tried to run AV? Have had any other issues with you PC like freezing error messages, crashes or anything else like that?
 
I have an active antivirus and antispyware software and I would update and scan the hard disk drive periodically. No system error messages or freezing nor any crashing of hard drive. Everything seems to be running as usual...smooth and fine. No strange or weird computer issues noticeable. I would also occasionally defragement and using the disk check utility to diagnose hard disk and the status report is always indicating that no problems were found.

I am just wondering if the laptop hard drive need to be replaced? The hard drive seems to be relatively fine which made me puzzled.

So the main thing that I want to highlight is that I have reformatted, defragment and run disk check utility as well as av and antispyware software but the problem still exists...
 
Castle said:
I have an active antivirus and antispyware software and I would update and scan the hard disk drive periodically. No system error messages or freezing nor any crashing of hard drive. Everything seems to be running as usual...smooth and fine. No strange or weird computer issues noticeable. I would also occasionally defragement and using the disk check utility to diagnose hard disk and the status report is always indicating that no problems were found.

I am just wondering if the laptop hard drive need to be replaced? The hard drive seems to be relatively fine which made me puzzled.

So the main thing that I want to highlight is that I have reformatted, defragment and run disk check utility as well as av and antispyware software but the problem still exists...
Click to expand...

Yeah thats why I asked if you were having any other issues, because alot of times when a hard drive is on its way out you get errors, crashes, freezing, clicking noise etc...

I would have to agree it sounds like the drive is on its way out
 
But none of the above mentioned issues exists. There are no system errors, crashes, freezes, weird hard disk or clicking noise etc etc etc. Everything seems normal except "ONLY" that the hard drive free space available differs from time to time. How can I be convinced that the hard disk is wearing out?
 
How are you checking how much disk space is free? 7GB is way to much for paging and other temporary file caches. Does the free space go back up to 17GB when you power it off and turn it back on? Also, is System Restore on?

Other than the space on the drive apparently changing it sounds like it's fine.
 
sup2jzgte said:
Have you tried to run a fitness test on the drive
Click to expand...

In replying to this thread, what do you mean by running a fitness test on the drive? Would you mind to elaborate more on this? Are you refering to a specific software to perform this task?
 
Cromewell said:
How are you checking how much disk space is free? 7GB is way to much for paging and other temporary file caches. Does the free space go back up to 17GB when you power it off and turn it back on? Also, is System Restore on?

Other than the space on the drive apparently changing it sounds like it's fine.
Click to expand...

In replying your requests, I am refering to hard disk space and not cache memory. I simply go to my computer icon under C: Drive by right clicking to properties to check avaliable disk space and usage.

The hard disk only returns to the orginally freely available space on a very peridically basis, meaning that after reboot it still remains at 7GB. To put it very simply, somehow and sometime later when I check disk space again the free space increases back.
 
Invisible files that eat up your memory are

-MFT (which can get quite large if you don't clean up your disk, and have billions of tiny update files)
-Paging file
-Memory needed for hibernation (is usually about 1.5X the size of your ram)
-Memory used by system restore

You could disable system restore, and hibernation and see if most of the space comes back.
 
heyman421 said:
Invisible files that eat up your memory are

-MFT (which can get quite large if you don't clean up your disk, and have billions of tiny update files)
-Paging file
-Memory needed for hibernation (is usually about 1.5X the size of your ram)
-Memory used by system restore

You could disable system restore, and hibernation and see if most of the space comes back.
Click to expand...

I think the second point does make sense!!

Since the hard disk free space comes on and off, I am quite certain it could be due to insufficient ram which caused cache files to be temporary stored on hard disk drive as my computer ram is only 128MB!

Many thanks to HeyMan for solving my query and I think my next step is to upgrade the ram.

Once again hopefully this thread will be useful to some others encountering the same hard disk space issue and may your query be solved through this thread too!!
 
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