Hard 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.
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2004]



wrote:

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.
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2004]




wrote:

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?

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.
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2004]



wrote:

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).
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2004]




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.
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2004]




wrote:

i cant save anything onto the drive, ths drive reads as 0
bytes used and 0 bytes free space