I have an external hard disk, and for some reason, it is reporting wrong free space.
In Windows Explorer, it is showing the used space is 378 GB.
I tried running chkdsk H: /f /r, it seems to report the same usage as Windows Explorer, and it says that there is no problem.
But when I tried selecting all the files inside this drive, it is showing much lesser usage.
I've already set the setting to show all hidden files and folders, also show the protected OS files, but it still cannot find about those missing files. And the difference is huge (282 GB). I've already cleaned the Recycle bin as well.
What I am missing here and how do I identify those missing spaces?
[UPDATE]:
I used this tools to help identify and it seems to find some gigantic files, of which filename is quite weird. Anyone knows what this is and is it safe to delete?
Best Answer
I had the same problem, but a different cause. In my case when I tried to select all the files on the C:\ partition, the used space was 70 GB, but the Windows Explorer was showing 210 GB of used space.
I have looked on the internet, but no answer seemed to be helpful. I didn't have backup enabled nor old copies of windows installed.
I decided to download a disk usage analyzer called WinDirStat and I instantly had the missing space. It was a MSSQL .mdf file that was taking about 140 GB. Deleted that file and everything got back to normal.