free space vanished!

Greetings!

Windows 98SE, IE6.0
Hard drive divided into C,D,E, & F FAT 32 partitions for my convenience and file organization.

C: drive is roughly 6 GB; with about 3 GB Used and 3 GB Free Space.

No recent partition changes, etc. All working well.

My story:
I set BIOS to boot from CD drive and ran LindowsLive (runs from CD). Made some changes in configuration, etc. as I checked it out. I shut it down, rebooted, reset BIOS to boot from HDD, and restarted.

When I began to use Windows I was greeted with a message that said I was out of hard drive space and that C: partition had 105 kB left. Yikes! All other partitions were okay. I clicked on My Computer and checked out C: drive properties. Sure enough, I had no free space left on C: partition.

I then adjusted my swapfile to give me a few MB breathing room so I could run a few programs, rebooted, and opened Partition Magic 4.0. It showed that I had 3 GB free space! A quick check of C: drive properties again and it showed zero free space. In PM I clicked on Operations - Info - Cluster Waste and found that I had 3 GB of data and 3 GB was identified as wasted space!!!! This additional information was also provided:

"Disk space is allocated one cluster at a time. If the data does not fill a cluster the remaining space is wasted."

HOWEVER, the graph showed only 3% wasted space for the entire drive. So, conflicting info.

Wasted space. What to do? I did a defrag and it all cleared up. However, I'd like to understand this.

Q: Why did this happen? What happened at the drive level/cluster level? Is it a coincidence that this happened after trying out LwindowsLive?


Janusz
Age doesn't always bring wisdom. Sometimes age comes alone.

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Try running scandisk on the C: drive.

It may be that Windows is reporting the disk space incorrectly.

It sounds like Lindow$ is the problem.
Can you do a SCANREG /RESTORE?

I recall reading somewhere that Lindows needs drives formatted a different way than Windows-maybe that took your hard drive space?

It sounds like LIndow$ took the free space.

I remember reading somewhere that Lindows needs the disk formatted a different way.

You can try a SCANREG /RESTORE?

You can also try (from a DOS prompt) FDISK then check your C drive to see if it has another partition. BE CAREFUL USING THE FORMAT COMMAND.....

Thanks!

Additional comments:

1. LindowsLive runs strictly from CD - it's a "demo" CD so you can experience the OS w/o installing the full version; not installed on hard drive; nevertheless, I remain suspicious and am reluctant to try it again. :(

2. All available free space became wasted space; what is wasted space? - It kinda implies that the space is improperly used or not needed.

3. Defrag showed only 1% defragmented. The wasted space problem cleared up when I did defrag. There is no problem NOW.

4. Ran scandisk to see if space not being reported correctly - no problems. A-OK.

5. Partition Magic shows all okay now; no conflicting space information.

6. I am left wondering, "What the heck was that?"


Janusz
Age doesn't always bring wisdom. Sometimes age comes alone.

At a DOS prompt type:
dir c:\*.* /a /os
This will display all files in the root in order of their size. The program may have its own swapfile or somthing that was left behind. I have a SuSE Lenux Demo CD which puts a data file on the hard drive (optional) so it does not have to go through the setup process each time you use it.

When you ran the chkdsk did you see a lot of files you can't account for as hidden?

------------------
My
Two Cents
Dennis
Visit Politalk

Thanks, Eeyore! That makes sense . . .

I did the file check. Nothing new or unusual or hidden.

When I started LindowsLive I did NOT see any kind of notice, option, etc. that it would "use" the hard drive; however, I did wonder about saving settings when using the Quick Boot feature after setting up internet connection. I also tried Open Office and "saved" a test file. I assumed it was all in RAM and only good for THAT session. Perhaps not.

I could not find anything about LindowsLive CD writing hidden files to the hard drive . . . all they say is that it does not interfere with your present OS.

Thanks for taking the time to comment.


Janusz
Age doesn't always bring wisdom. Sometimes age comes alone.

I find it hard to believe that any operating system, even a demo, can truly run completely from a CD. I suspect it had to create or use a temporary directory somewhere.

Have you tried looking though your folders and files to see if you have a huge block of temp files that never got deleted?

Did you look for any unfamiliar directories or folders that weren't there before?

Did you look in your Recycle Bin to see if Lindows deleted all it's temp files, and they all ended up in you 'trash'?

Just a thought.

Steve