Okay so.... running on a custom build... foxconn flamingblade mobo intel i7 920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz CPU gigabit geforce 9800 GT gfx 6GB (3x2) Corsair XMS3 DDR3 WD Raptor 74GB system drive various other HDD's ranging from 300GB-2TB all running Windows XP Pro x64 ( legit legal copy ) + all service packs & updates Got my new 2TB WD green drive a while back.... it formatted fine and initially accepted ~ 700GB of media files uncorrupted.... all was pretty well up until this point.... other than a noticed unusually slow transfer speed. I transferred a few smaller files over a couple days... Shortly thereafter.... when not accessing the drive in any way ( and no programs were at any point directed to look at or read said files ) I began getting "Windows - Delayed write failed" errors on various files as well as the MFT and the /System volume information folder... basically any file, hidden or not. I swapped the SATA cable as well as changed the port I was using on my MOBO but alas the errors persisted. all the visible files it reported on still work fine. I was able to use chkdsk to clean everything up... but if I would access the drive i would begin to get errors again shortly after. ... I eventually was able to chalk up the slow transfer speed/ ridiculous errors (that left all of my data uncorrupted) to my PSU being drastically underpowered for my current system. ( I have added a lot of HDD's since the original build. ) so after disconnecting a couple other HDD's ( I also just reformatted and reinstalled windows ) all of the errors have stopped and everything was still uncorrupted. ran chkdsk.. fixed some stuff again.. all is seemingly well. the used/free space was still being reported correctly at this point. I then transferred a 150Gb RAR'd file ( split into DVD sized chunks ) to the drive. which went fine... However, shortly thereafter I noticed that the "free space" was drastically under-reported. The ACTUAL used space on the drive is somewhere around 779GB... windows will report this if you add up the data on the drive manually. but every utility imaginable is reporting that i only have ~245GB free.... 2TB drive = 1863GB - (779GB used +245GB free) = 839GB MISSING SPACE Currently the specs list in: Windows Explorer -1.58TB Used -244GB Free 13% Disk Management -1863GB Capacity -244.7GB Free 13% HDTune -1863GB Capacity -244.7GB Free TreeSize -779.1GB Used -244.8GB Free 13% SequoiaView -703.5GB Used -245GB Free 34.8% - The inconsistency in the SequoiaView "Used Space " listing is due to an under-reporting of the "150GB folder" discussed above. -An error scan in HDtune turns up nothing... the health report shows a ridiculous listing (863362) for UltraDMA CRC Error Count... but otherwise is fine. ( that count would appear to be linked to the write delayed errors and has not been increasing at all since i first checked it. I am assuming something related to that last file transfer caused some sort of corruption to to the MFT? There are not any "hidden files" or restore points being saved on the drive... it is strictly for the backup of large media files. I am really at a loss as to what else to do. would love to liberate my free space! hope someone here has some other ideas. ( I am trying to avoid the "costly" prospect of having to buy another 2TB drive just so I can wipe this one ) Thank you for bearing with me and for your help
some progress with that..... in windirstat it is showing mostly the same stuff as treesize and sequoiaview.... however, i have found the large block of missing data, categorized as "<unknown>" in windirstat. 839.2GB to be exact.... given that it is "unknown" though it will not let me delete or in any way modify it. these links explain what i pretty much figured: http://blog.windirstat.info/20061013/unknown-space/ http://blog.windirstat.info/20070321/unknown-again/ but i have tried all the advice given in there already.. so i guess the question now is... how does one locate the un-locatable data?
Could be two thing really: 1. The file system has gone loopy, this does not really add up as you have run a file system check. 2. The operating system is hiding the space used from you. Recommend booting a live disk and running another disk usage analysis tool. The operating system is no longer hiding any thing from you. If this fails, probably time to start with a blank file system.
makes sense, i will make attempts at resolving from a live disk.... don't know why i didn't think to try that! many thanks for your advice thus far tehBoris I will report back in a day or so
My first thought, considering you were getting a bunch of corruption and then lost space was bad sectors, but I mean, 800-some GB of it is unheard of. Chkdsk should correct anything MFT related so that's conflicting information. Have you tried running a low-level physical check on the drive using the manufacturer utility? The health report about the UDMA CRC errors could be controller-related, either the board's or the drive's.
alright... so I tried to run some utilities from a UBCD, didn't get anywhere.... tried a windows live cd... same "mysterious" space missing. I have run all the tests in Western Digitals utility and the drive passes. I did notice that chkdsk is reporting 839.1GB of bad sectors....( not sure how i did not see that before.... but it obviously hasn't been fixing anything ) so I ran HDD Regenerator which detected no bad sectors and thus repaired none.
Maybe worth trying the Spinrite program - I've heard that people have had success with it. http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm Sometimes manufacturers release tools/software to test their drives. Might also want to look and see if there is one for the drive in question. I've done that at work in the past and managed to fix strange issues.
