Why is XP eating 34GB on an empty HDD?

[Guden Oden]

I just repartitioned and formatted the thing; one 250GB partition covering the entire drive, and no files stored on it. Still, windows declares 34GB used space, WTF? I even tried turning off system restore but it made zero difference.

Again: WTF?

 

[_xxx_]

Something went wrong? Last time I checked it took like 3-4 gig of my HD after a clean install (with SP2).

 

[kyleb]

How big is your windows folder? Or what folder is so big?

 

[Frank]

Did you try TreeSize?

While the drive index takes quite a bit of space as well, I don't think that is reported at all.

 

[Guden Oden]

I just used the drive manager in the administration tools control panel applet, deleted the two existing partitions, then created 1 new one to fill the entire drive, then did a full format to get rid of all the junk still hanging around (in case file system error occurs I don't get old data jumbled up with new).

34.4GB in use despite not a single new file created on the drive.

Filesystem overhead hasn't been counted in as in-use space last time I looked... So I'm still like, WTH?

 

[Natoma]

bad sectors?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

MFT Zone.

 

[mito]

is mtf similar to fat?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

is mtf similar to fat?

It's not the same. Read the link.

 

[suryad]

Hmm MFT...when I was using Diskkeeper and defragging for the first time, it was asking me if I would like to change the MFT to what the recommended is and I let it take care of it. My disk has never been faster. While I have a 60 gb laptop drive, and am currently using only 8.14 gb my transfer rates are a sustained 32 mb/sec! I dont know what the MFT really does (Master File Table???) but it must do something cause my hdd is faster than my brothers desktop 60 gb running @ 7200 rpm!