Where is my missing disk space?

This is a problem which most of us encounter. Your hard disk which is supposed to be able to hold a certain amount of data shows very little free space available in spite of having stored very little data on it.

Often a substantial portion of the storage is taken up by the temporary files. This poses a problem when you work with an application that creates very large temporary files, such as an image-editing program. Also remember that deleting files and sending them to the Recycle Bin doesn't actually remove them from the disk. So using the Disk Cleanup tool periodically is a good idea to recover your storage space.

There are other factors like System Restore Points which also tend to eat into your disk space. By default, Windows XP creates a system restore point almost every 24 hours. The size of these restore points can easily be 2MB to 5MB or even larger.

Good storage housekeeping, along with understanding the actual available storage space your drive started with, will clear up most concerns about "missing" storage space.

Here’s a checklist on what you could do to find your disk space

1. Make hidden files visible.

To do this Go to my computer click on tools. Click on Folder options and select the View tab. Now select the Show hidden files and folders option.

2. De-fragment your hard disk

3. Run the Disk Cleanup wizard.

To do this Goto Programs ,select Accessories and click on System Tools and run the disk cleanup.

4.Scan for disk corruption. From Windows Explorer, right-click on the disk drive, select properties, select tools, and check for errors/scan disk. (Do not normally select recover damaged sectors.)

5. Empty the Recycle Bin.