Disk space discrepency between chkdsk and Window Explorer

Question

Our Windows Server 2003 server was setup with only 12GB on the C drive, therefore we now have disk space problems.

Yesterday I freed up 1 Gb of space (by moving the pagefile to D), then came in this morning to see only 17.2 Mb available, when looking at the drive properties. But when I use chkdsk, it says there is 1.13Gb available.

Using WinDirStat, it says we have 4 Gb "unknown" but I'm not sure if that is relevant or not. Most everything is installer packages. We have SQL Server running on the machine, with most databases stored on another drive. What could be causing this discrepancy?

Chkdsk output:


12586927 KB total disk space.
  11268664 KB in 50051 files.
  21344 KB in 10179 indexes.
      0 KB in bad sectors.
 165955 KB in use by the system.
  64992 KB occupied by the log file.
1130964 KB available on disk.
   4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
3146731 total allocation units on disk.
 282741 allocation units available on disk.

Something still in the recycle bin? – Tim Dec 28 '11 at 18:15 — Tim, Dec 28 '11 at 18:15

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 28 '11 at 18:18

1

Explorer tends to value user friendliness over accuracy, so I would count Explorer out. I like to use the tool Space Sniffer to get better read outs for Windows.

answered Dec 28 '11 at 18:18

Tim

3,017
17
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Space Sniffer is great; it found a lot of stuff WinDirStat didn't see, like the System Volume files, which are 3Gb. I still do not know the exact culprit, but this answers the question. Thanks. – David Dec 28 '11 at 18:27
No prob! Happy hunting! – Tim Dec 28 '11 at 18:32

Disk space discrepency between chkdsk and Window Explorer

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