Mystery: Where are 13 GB hiding?

I have a WD 20 GB HDD (5400 RPM) which shows up as having only 6.7 GB Free Space. Adding up all files over 25,000 KB, I have used up only 6.4 GB. What would account for the missing 13+ GB?

 

But why only the files over 25MB? All the files count, surley.

 

Go into harddrive properties and look at the pie chart.

 

You can do an advanced search on your harddrive for files over a certain size. Take a look and see what you can delete. I had a problem with digital camera pics. It would each put a massive 32in by something pic on my drive and I would resize the picture to a normal size but name it another name and then stupidly forget to delete the original massive file picture.

 

Thanks for your replies. I have very few programs on my 20 GB HDD. I have neither games nor music loaded. That is why it is so strange to go into Properties and see 12.3 Used and 6.73 Free, when adding up all the programs over 25 MB only comes up to about 6.4 GB. Also, I clean out my Temporary Internet Files, etc. every day.

Another strange thing is having identical cache.DB files (256 MB each a few hours ago; now 262,144 each). One is under . . .Application Data\AOL\TopSpeed\2.0. The other is under . . .Application Data\AOL\Storage.

Does anyone else have a clue as to where the other 13 GB might be?

 

Check your page file usage.

Right Click My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Performance (Settings button) -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory (change button)
Check out how big the page file is.
That could be taking up a few GB if you let windows dynamically set it.

You didn't answer my question, though, why only files OVER 25MB? There are an awful lot of system files, you know, the windows directory takes up 1.8GB, while only 1 of them is over 25MB (driver.cab). In fact, most files that make up programs are under 25MB in size.

 

I followed your advice and took a look at Page File Size. Initial Size is 768 MB. Maximum Size is 1536 MB. Haven't looked into files under 25MB yet. (But, that's why I made allowances for another GB in my original accounting.)

 

I looked around here at major geeks for this app called "spacemonger" I've used this before and liked it. I couldn't find it here @ geeks, so I searched it for you, hope it helps

It's freeware you can find it here--

http://www.werkema.com/software/spacemonger.html