FAO Techie's

[Northern]

I know there's a fair few of you on here that know abit about computers and the like, just wondering if you know the answer to the following:

Basically my laptop fucked up yesterday and after trying for 4 hours to get it to work I had to resort to doing a full PC restore (i.e. reverting the laptop back to the factory settings, and losing alot of data)

Now the laptop works fine again, however it's telling me that the C: drive still contains as much data as it did before the restore, meaning I only have 10GB of free space, but have hardly any files on the computer.

Are all the films, video's, music etc. still stored somewhere on the hard drive and if not what;s taking up all the space?

Thanks in advance,
Lee

[panther]

I do believe Ed is your man for this one Northern... tup:

[Yeadon Bantam]

Probably quarantined the data on a partition or something? at a guess as i know very little

[BaselBantam]

Look for a folder called C:\Porn and delete it that should give you most of your space back...

If you really can't see anything on your HD, you could try the recycle bin that can become clogged up if you've just deleted loads of stuff.

How did you restore your PC - by reformatting the drive, or just by doing a restore? Normally a simple restore wouldn't delete anything.

You could also use something like http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/ to show what is taking up space on your drive.

[Ed]

If you used the restore disk that came with your Laptop, then by standard they spilt up your harddrive in to two.

c: = operating system
d: = where they expect you to put files so if you restore you don't loose them.

If you have saved everything to a partition called D: then it won't of removed the files.

You say that it's saying that C: is using so much are you sure it's not partitioned your PC? in the way I stated above.

When you use these restore cd's they are designed to only kill what's on C: and not any other partitions youve created manually or that came with the setup.

[Northern]

Cheers. I didn't use the CD's, I executed the PC restore while in Safe Mode. Yeah Ed, the D: is used for recovery but is only 6GB in size and contains files used for the PC restore.

I downloaded the program Basel mentioned and ran a scan on the C: which told me only 12.3GB were in use but when I look at C: properties it says I don't even have that much space free....

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i285/lee_norton50/diskspace.jpg

[Ed]

if you have a windows disk, reboot with it in, and run chkdsk

[BaselBantam]

And definitely nothing in the recycle bin?

You could also check that you haven't accidentally set up a huge swap file for virtual memory -

Press the "Windows" key and "Pause" together (or Control Panel > System).
Click "Advanced" tab
Click "Settings" button in Performance box
Click "Advanced" tab in the performance options window. You can see the size of the space resorved for virtual memory. I can't say what the optimum amount is (not my area of expertise), but you should be able to see if that it what is using up your HD space.

[BaselBantam]

You could also try deleting Temporary Internet Files ("Tools" > "Internet Options" in IE). These can sometimes build up over time and they might not show in the analysis program because the directories tend to be hidden.

[Northern]

Nope, still no luck. Virtual memory is hardly anything, I have no Tempory Internet files. Doing the chkdsk confirms that C: is almost full. Looks like I might need to re-format the C: to completely clear it then do a full system restore again. :rolleyes:

[Ed]

your rescue mode didn't clean the drive correctly then, the files are in a hidden format as the dates of the files are newer than the disk your using.

Search google for file recovery programs.

[Northern]

your rescue mode didn't clean the drive correctly then, the files are in a hidden format as the dates of the files are newer than the disk your using.

Search google for file recovery programs.

Cheers for that Ed.

I've downloaded various free file recovery programs but only one finds all my data. Unfortunately it's only a demo and will cost $69 to actually recover the data. tdwn:

[Ed]

Use a torrent program and search www.isohunt.com (http://www.isohunt.com) for a cracked version.

[Tarty]

Use a torrent program and search www.isohunt.com (http://www.isohunt.com) for a cracked version.

Thought you were not allowed to discuss illegal stuff on here :rolleyes:

[Ed]

Thought you were not allowed to discuss illegal stuff on here :rolleyes:

Sorry, hands slapped - do a search - torrents are discussed many times on this forum.