2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under 50GB

two 930 GB partitions defined. both partitions function properly reading/writing. admin & second user defined on system. admin has full privileges over both partitions. both users have full privileges over half that is misbehaving.

properties show shared partition has 18GB of 931GB available. I cannot find any file larger that 2GB on this partition and my estimate is that no more that 50GB of space is consumed by the files visible on the disk.

I believe I have settings configured to view all hidden and system files. I cannot find anything close to the 913GB which properties reports is used.

What settings should I be looking for ..

to confirm the disk is properly formatted
to confirm that I have access to the entire partition
to find files which may remain hidden

Thanks

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

The 2TB drive is an internal HD which was added to the system for data storage purposes. The OS remains on the original HD which shipped with system.

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

Please post a maximized screen shot of Disk Management.

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

attached screen shot of disk management. i see the image when previewing this post but not sure how to see it when posted. hopefully you can !?

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

All I see is your words.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/289032-screenshots-files-upload-post-vista-forums.html

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

inserted it this time, rather than attaching it. seems to have worked. sorry about the confusion

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

That's ok. I don't think I've run into this. Try WizTree freeware. See what it shows.

Edit: unless WizTree shows something that explains what is going on you may as well run malware scans. I would try Malwarebytes anti-malware free version first.

Edit2: A couple of questions. How long did you run this split drive before weird things happened? Did you slow format the partitions or quick format?

I've never been a believer in quick format. Especially when changing file system type. But even when I format a partition to the same type, I slow format. It just seems to give a better shot of things progressing as expected.

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

i've had this situation for over a year, probably close to two years. i've just deferred putting the attention on solving the problem. i suspect that if i had a choice on speed of formatting, that I would have done it slow. i don't remember checking the properties on the drive immediately after formatting it, but it seems like the % usage has been reporting wrong for a long time. for a while i was thinking somehow vista was confused and reporting %free as %used. ( reversing them )

the "ok" partition has enough space on it to accommodate everything on the "broken" half. i've wondered about moving all data to the "ok" partition and reformatting the "broken" half. i don't know anything about reformatting other than to do it very cautiously. can a reformat be limited to a partition on a drive like this?

i'll investigate the software you recommended.

thanks!

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

I think your idea is well worth trying. Copy off anything you want from G: and then just right click the G: drive(going by your screen shot that's the one with only 1% free space) in Explorer Computer window, and click Format. It should offer to format as NTFS and likely the quick format options is checked. Just uncheck the quick format and start it off. That size drive a slow format might take 90 minutes to two hours.

Before you hit the button just make sure you got all the files you want off and that the drive letter is the right one.

Pleas post what happens after the format.

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

What did WizTree show?

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

WizTree seems to validate my assertion that the 913GB reported by Vista as "used", is not the result of actual files. Screen shots below.





I've got only 22 files that are sufficiently large that WizTree reports them as greater than 0% of the drive. Only one of those is large enough to report as over 1% of the drive.

Any further thoughts? Is a reformat of the partition still considered the best approach?

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

Here's an idea. Try copying all your videos to a folder o the good partition. See if they fit before deciding.

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

ok. malwarebytes found no issues either.

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

I wonder if you have a bad spot in the middle of the drive? I don't recall seeing this type of problem. It's probably worth formatting just to see what happens.

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

btw did you use Disk Management to split the drive into partitions or a third party tool? I know I had problems using Paragon tools with Vista NTFS partitions in the past.

data copied to good partition. think i'm ready to start clearing "bad" partition ..

all photo and video files from "bad" partition fit on good partition ok, consuming expecting quantity of GB. btw, malwarebytes found no issues. next step is to delete the files from the "bad" partition and see if all the "used" GBs are freed up ?? maybe reformat the "bad" partition regardless? because I am wary of reformat, I'd love to get another confirmation that reformatting one partition of a drive should NOT IN ANY WAY affect the data sitting on the second partition. true?

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

i used disc configuration tool recommended by disk manufacturer. i believe it was Seagate software.

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

MilesAhead said:

I wonder if you have a bad spot in the middle of the drive? I don't recall seeing this type of problem. It's probably worth formatting just to see what happens.

Click to expand...

i don't recall what tools can be used to detect and map around bad media locations. suggestions?

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

Right. If you format by right clicking the partition in Explorer then it's tough to make a mistake. Just make sure you have the drive letter you want before hitting the final button. The data on the two partitions is independent of each other as long as you don't change any partitions(such as resize delete the partition etc..)

Re: 2TB drive partitioned in 2 equal halves. One half shows near full but has under

removed all files from "bad" partition. still shows 854GB used. ready to reformat. what is the guidance on allocation unit size?