From 500g to 33g

[jaxmar]

My Toshiba HDTC605 500g Ext. Hard Drive, when empty, only has 33.7g of storage.
Are there hidden files?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, jaxmar.

If you suspect that there might be an issue with the drive itself, I'd suggest that you backup any important files which you might have on it, just to be on the safe side. After that, I'd go ahead and update your antivirus program's database and make a full scan of the HDD with it, to see if there are any threats. It would be nice if you could download an HDD diagnostic tool and test it for error and bad sectors as well.
Other than that, you could take a look at this article: http://www.howtogeek.com/125923/7-ways-to-free-up-hard-disk-space-on-windows/. Most of the tips are for the system drive, but some of them are viable for external HDDs as well. You should definitely check the "Analyze Disk Space" step, to see if you can figure what what could be eating up your storage space.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[iTrouble]

My Toshiba HDTC605 500g Ext. Hard Drive, when empty, only has 33.7g of storage.
Are there hidden files?

go to folder options and UNCHECK THE BOX "hide protected operating system files (recommended)" and see in the drive

or there might be many problems involved with hdd's try diagnostic tools etc...
use windirstat to check what's eating up the space