 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
Windows Forum / Windows Me / Hardware / September 2004Hard drive problems
Ok recently weve had a virus and after speedily ridding ourselves of it one of our drives has started reading as 0 MB free. Now im sure this is not the case as we definitley do not have 128 GB of stuff on that drive, so can anyone lend me a hand? Run scandisk on the drive as the problem could be as simple as an error in the free space record, something that is only updated when Win Me shuts down, until then the free space is held in memory. If scandisk reports no errors then check using Explorer for what might be taking up that space. For example if the drive is that containing the windows folder, has system restore gone out of bounds and stopped discarding older data? Do this by checking the size of the C:\_RESTORE folder.  SignatureMike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2004] mcmaltby@hotmail.com > Ok recently weve had a virus and after speedily ridding > ourselves of it one of our drives has started reading as 0 > MB free. Now im sure this is not the case as we definitley > do not have 128 GB of stuff on that drive, so can anyone > lend me a hand? thanks for that, ok ive run scandisk but when i try to scan the drive it come up with the message "scandisk cannot check this drivenow because the disk is not properly formatted, or a program such as a disk utility has locked it. Format the disk or wait for the disk utility to finish and then restart scan disk", what should we do about this? Is this drive accessible in Explorer? What does Explorer have to say about its contents? Does this drive contain your system/windows folder? Do you run GoBack? You could try booting to DOS using a floppy and running SCANDISK from the DOS prompt. SignatureMike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2004] mcmaltby@hotmail.com anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote: > thanks for that, ok ive run scandisk but when i try to > scan the drive it come up with the message "scandisk [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > utility to finish and then restart scan disk", what should > we do about this? ok, its fully accessable from explorer and no, windows is not on this drive, and do you mean system restore by goback? > do you mean system restore by goback? No, I meant was "Do you run or use or have installed a program called Go Back" If so then to boot to DOS you need to follow the instructions provided with GoBack. If the drive doesn't contain the windows folder then any problem isn't down to the C:\_RESTORE archive having gone out of bounds so all you need do is use Explorer to help establish what is using your disk space. Look for large files or files created or modified since the time when you had plenty of free space on the drive then delete those not required so as to recover your space. SignatureMike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2004] mcmaltby@hotmail.com > ok, its fully accessable from explorer and no, windows is > not on this drive, and do you mean system restore by > goback? No i dont have goback, ok i cant find anything that was different from before it started doing this but ive deleted a whole bunch of stuff i no longer need and it still reads as full Are you saying that Explorer reports no change in free space after deleting a file. How are you measuring the free space? Right click on the drive letter and select Properties and look at the General tab. This should give you the Used space and Free space in bytes. a) Create a txt file and type a few hundred random characters. Save the file. b) Right click on the new txt file, select Properties and check the size of the file in bytes. c) Right click on the drive letter and select Properties and look at the General tab. Note down the Used space and Free space in bytes. d) Now delete a file using shift delete (which means the file will bypass the recycle bin). e) Right click on the drive letter and select Properties and look at the General tab. Note down the Used space and Free space in bytes. The free space at e) should equal that at c) plus b) (the size of the deleted file). SignatureMike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2004] mcmaltby@hotmail.com anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote: > No i dont have goback, ok i cant find anything that was > different from before it started doing this but ive > deleted a whole bunch of stuff i no longer need and it > still reads as full i cant save anything onto the drive, ths drive reads as 0 bytes used and 0 bytes free space I'm still waiting to see the results of your running scandisk from a DOS prompt. Have you done this yet? Until you do so it is somewhat pointless continuing. You should be able to do this from a DOS window. SignatureMike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2004] mcmaltby@hotmail.com anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote: > i cant save anything onto the drive, ths drive reads as 0 > bytes used and 0 bytes free space with a full surface scan it didnt detect any errors, although im not sure how accurate that is as it only took a fraction of the time it normally would take Did you check the correct drive? Is it possible that you checked a different drive such as maybe a boot floppy? What does FDISK have to say about the drive? SignatureMike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2004] mcmaltby@hotmail.com anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote: > with a full surface scan it didnt detect any errors, > although im not sure how accurate that is as it only took > a fraction of the time it normally would take sorry about that, i was scanning the wrong drive, but scandisk still says it cant scan it, fdisk says that the total disk space is 76317 MB which is alright (sorry, 80 GB drive, not 120) anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote: > sorry about that, i was scanning the wrong drive, I wondered if that was what might have happened > but scandisk still says it cant scan it, Does scandisk say why it cannot scan the disk? Does it report any errors? > fdisk says that the > total disk space is 76317 MB which is alright (sorry, 80 > GB drive, not 120) How does fdisk say the disk is partitioned? Option 5 to select the hard disk, then 4 to check how partitioned. Does it show the filing system to be FAT32? SignatureMike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2004] mcmaltby@hotmail.com yes, the filing system is shown as FAT32, but scandisk doesnt show any extra info about it, all it says is that scandisk is unable to examine this drive |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2008 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.