this might be a silly question but here it is anyways. I have a 1tb drive in my pc as a storage drive for movies, music etc. There is only 5 or 6 folders on it and when i check the properties of these folders they add up to 700gb used but under drive properties it says 865 used. I am running vista ultimate and I have the recycling bin disabled for that drive. My question is where are those 165gbs in the difference?

could be a couple things. but first, is system restore turned on ? if so, up to 12 percent of the hdd space is taken. If you check and the answer is yes, then there ya go. If not post back.

I say it's hidden pr0n he forgot about.

LOL no thats not it. System restore is turned off for that drive as well. Has me puzzled though, I figured I had looked at everything obvious. Any more ideas?

you dont have a pagefile set on that drive do you?

you do have show hidden files and folders enabled right?
try running the disc cleanup wizard on that drive and see what it says.

there aren't any programs that would have pre-allocated that space would there?

Unless its the way windows is calculating the space. if you do some simple math there should be ~168 gigs 'missing' keep in mind a gig is 1024 not 1000 in actuality. factor in that extra 24 for all 700 gigs and you are left with about 168G in question. Windows adds this up a lil differently. maybe thats what it is.

I just did a check on 830GB of media "stuff" on a drive. Alt+enter on the folder showed 830GB of "stuff", and the properties of the drive showed 830GB of "stuff".

I have no pagefile, I have no system restore, I have no temp internet files, I have no recycled dir. I'd have to say run a "chkdsk -f" on it and see what it finds.

also do a "dir /ah" or "dir /as" on it at the root in a command prompt to see what nifties are hanging around, I'm sure there is some stupid hidden folder like "system volume information" that may have a crapload of, err, system volume information heh.

I think you hit it before Steve-O 168 gig's of pr0n lol

If ya dont live alone and someone has access to it...LOL

check in on what Steve-O suggested, you may very well get your answer.

hit it, heh.