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#11
Last edited by dalchina; 07 May 2021 at 01:03.
Hi again, still trying to discover what happened to my lost SSD space.
I ran Hiren's Boot CD HBCD_PE_x64.iso. couldn't find anything except the 'C:/documents and settings' folder size came up as 'blank'. Ran a disk test which came back fine, didn't find anything although I don't really know what I was looking for.
Having rebooted, I come back to these following screenshots, isn't something amiss with the sizes?
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Your last highlighted bubble seems to omit at least the free space on C: Then remember the available space is never the physical space on the disk.
It seems pretty clear that the $Extend folder is the culprit (~22GB). Almost every bit of info about this on user forums confirms that it is an NTFS folder and both cannot and should not be messed with. That is hardly helpful! It is clearly related to pending file deletes, which is maybe why it got hosed in your case. Here is one that was 550GB:
hard drive - system and reserved folder 550GB win 10 - Super User
This link: What is the $Extend\$deleted directory on Windows? - Quora
says that the folder should get cleared on reboot - that is presumably not happening in your case. But this link
The “\$Extend\$Deleted” directory – My DFIR Blog
says that running chkdsk should fix it. I have no idea which switches should be used, but give it a try. Failing that, other links suggest accessing via a Windows PE bootable Or even from a link on this forum:
Whats filling my C drive?
which suggests (post 43) the fsutil tool.
Good luck! Martin
Have you installed Partition Wizard to try and see the missing space ?
MiniTool Partition Wizard | Best partition magic alternative for Windows PC and Server
I apologize if I missed it, but have you simply restarted your PC so see if the space returns?
Also, the file system itself creates overhead, so you won't get the full capacity of the SSD. I am not smart enough to tell you how much that overhead costs, however.
EDIT: Here is a drive space calculator:
Free Hard Drive Capacity Calculator | Check Hard Disk Available Space
According to that, a 240GB drive is 223.2GB real world.
Thank you all for your suggestions and support!
I seem to have got it sorted. Although I did a full system clean with Privazer once, the missing SSD space was still missing, that was before I posted here. I decided to do it a second time and now I have the missing space back, lol!
The only thing I did differently the second time cleaning Privazer is this: on the earlier clean, I right-clicked the Privazer icon and chose 'Run as Admin' (this is what I would normally do), clicked yes on UAC and ran the software. The second time around I simply clicked on Privazer (without right-clicking), clicked yes for UAC, and ran the software.
Is there a difference, if so the first time I ran it, it was with elevated permission in the Admin account, the second time would have been non-elevated? I should add that this is on a single user laptop Admin account.
After I ran the full system clean the second time around, the space has been recovered.
It does appear to be the $Extend folder, which maybe collected the mess I caused when I aborted the Fences install?
Many thanks to all your links and suggestions!!!
Have you tried installing Fences, letting it complete without interruption and the rebooting?
Many thanks all for your kind help and support. Marking as solved!