Missing 83 GB of memory

[McAvoy]

So I noticed something last week and it took me all week to figure it out. I am missing 83 GB of memory from my hard drive. I have no clue where it went or what is eating it up.

I have a 500 GB hard drive which only 451 of it I can use. But out of that 451 GB I am missing 83 GB.

Anyone have any ideas?

I tried and failed to open up and add all of the folders and files including hidden ones. Just too many to add up.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Do you mean that compared to the last time you checked there is 83 GB used that you can't account for? 83GB total use on that drive wouldn't be too bad, particularly counting the amount of space Windows itself plus all the installed programs take up. How much is the total usage?

It is a funny problem with marketing drives as 500GB or one TB when the amount reported by Windows is much less. The reason is actually that drive manufacturers and Windows count the size differently. Windows adheres to a convention used in computer science to count "kilo" using 1024x rather than 1000x as in real metric units because 1024 is the closest power of two (powers of two are more convenient for computers since they use binary rather than decimal). Hard drive makers calculate using metric units: 500 GB is exactly 500 billion bytes to them, so less than 500 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 as Windows counts.

[McAvoy]

I have a 500 GB hard drive. 451 GB is useable. Out of the 451 GB, I have 105 GB free space. So 83 GB of the 346 GB is missing that I can't account for.

Are you saying that 83 GB is taken up by Windows?

It's also odd because I have two hard drives both 500 GB for a total of 1 TB. The second one is 465 GB of useable space. Why is there a 14 GB difference?

... or should I learn more about hard drives?

[Mikey]

Did you check under the rug?

[McAvoy]

Yeah, just found floppy disks of yesteryear.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

I have a 500 GB hard drive. 451 GB is useable. Out of the 451 GB, I have 105 GB free space. So 83 GB of the 346 GB is missing that I can't account for.

Are you saying that 83 GB is taken up by Windows?

It's also odd because I have two hard drives both 500 GB for a total of 1 TB. The second one is 465 GB of useable space. Why is there a 14 GB difference?

... or should I learn more about hard drives?

No, Windows by itself wouldn't take up that much, but that plus installed programs plus a few files could easily get there.

[McAvoy]

You mean connected to Windows itself?

[Captain Picard's Hair]

I have a 500 GB hard drive. 451 GB is useable. Out of the 451 GB, I have 105 GB free space. So 83 GB of the 346 GB is missing that I can't account for.

Are you saying that 83 GB is taken up by Windows?

It's also odd because I have two hard drives both 500 GB for a total of 1 TB. The second one is 465 GB of useable space. Why is there a 14 GB difference?

... or should I learn more about hard drives?

Both drives are actually 465 GB; the 14 GB difference is due to the presence of a "recovery partition" on your C drive. That is a hidden section of the drive containing a set of recovery tools pre-installed on the drive by the manufacturer, which includes a complete copy of the default factory image Windows installation. Using this partition one can perform a factory re-install should their OS become corrupt or infected.

You mean connected to Windows itself?

I mean Windows takes up (in the case of Vista or 7) several gigabytes installed on a drive, programs can take up a few more, and user data added on that can bring the total to 83 GB (for example). But since you already had more in your own data (music, video, pics, documents, etc) or programs than that the point is irrelevant.

[McAvoy]

I don't understand.

I know that Windows has several gigabytes give or take on the hard drive. I am curious where this 83 GB is missing. Could it be some sort of counting error on the part of the computer?

[Primefalcon]

first off are you talking total space or free space/used space?

what would help is opening up my computer and then for each drive do the following: right click on a drive and select properties and pressing the prtscn (print screen) key then open up paint and go to edit->paste and save, and ten show us..... unless we'e claar on what the issue is.... helping can be..... problematic

[McAvoy]

It is used up space that is missing that I can't account for. Meaning like I said above, 451 GB total. 105 GB is free but I can only account for 263 GB used out of the 346 GB that the computer is telling me.

Showing you the pie graph isn't going to tell you wanything more than I have 105 GB free out of 451 GB.