Hard drive issue? (hidden files?)
 

So I was checking how much space I have left on my hard drive. It says that I had 55.9 gigs out of 74.4 gigs of free space. When I went into C drive and selected all the files in it, it only total up to 11.3 gigs. But someone I used up a total of 18.5 gigs.

Can those hidden files really take up 7.2 gigs of space? It's just that I recently just reformated, so I thought I would have a lot more space available.

I suggest you get a program like SpaceMonger that can tell you exactly where all of your hard drive space is going. Maybe that can help you figure out where all of your hard drive space is going.
http://www.werkema.com/software/spacemonger.html

Edit: someone beat me to it :p

Hmm. Nice program.

My Windows folder is about 3.1 gigs, which I think is normal. When I add it up manually, I'm still short about 3 gigs. Maybe I'm that stupid or something. T,T

It says my pagefile.sys is 2 gigs. Is that normal?

And is there suppose to be a gap between the Windows and Documents and Settings? I can't click on it.

I just used this an recoved almost 11GB. That space I reckon is just misc. data that isn't in it's own folder. Like on my E drive(72.1GB free) there is that blank box but I know it's nothing but my movie files and PSP8 program files.

If pagefiles are just a technical term for swapfiling, I'd say your space is being used to provide ram for whatever is eating up your resources - it's normal but you don't wont it to keep eating your space alive.

You can get to to show more details under the menu options. You can also tell it not to show the free space and it should show the file content in greater detail.

And pagefiles can be adjusted under Control -> System Properties

well isint this common ? the size upon adding and what windows shows arent the same. The missing hdd space can be used for a whole lot of purpose like virtual memory etc.

My C volume is 20 Gigs.
Acc to windows free space = 2.96 GB
But when i select all files and see properties it shows only 13.5 GB

So 13.5 + 2.96 = ~~16.5 GB
20-16.5 = 3.5 GB
In virtual memory for C: i have given minimum as 1500 mb and max as 2500 mb. SO i think windows is reserving 2.5 gb of space from the c:.