Lost disk space after shutting down during VHD creation

[dissemble2discover]

Hi,

I've ran into a real pickle with my HDD free space. I was in the middle of creating a brand-new VHD container for my Windows 7 installation when I mistakenly entered the incorrect VHD file size of 200 GB instead of 20 GB. Seeing how I didn't have time left since I was late for an appointment, I dediced to just shut off the machine in the middle of the VHD creation (200 GB). I learned from this mistake because thats 200 Whole GB of data I lost to use as "Free space".

Now, when I came back, I found my HDD reading only 285 GB of free space is available. I have a 1 TB drive (real value= 931 GB) that has 443 GB of space taken already by files. The VHD that I interrupted was 200 GB, but I interrupted the process.

Now, I don't see the VHD file AND it took all 200 GB of free space that I had. I still have the same amount of file usage of 443 GB (right-clicked the drive and saw used space) and it was indeed 443 GB. And, the weird part is, that it only showed that 285 GB was left.

I tried everything from disk cleanup to chkdsk to Hidden files to no avail.

Is there any way I can recover my lost free space due to my actions of shutting down PC during VHD creation?

 

[dissemble2discover]

what software did you try to use to create the VHD?

Windows built-in Disk Management Console.

Created a 200 GB file, then, in the middle of it, forced a shutdown (biggest mistake I ever made) and I lost 200 GB of free space, which I still can't recover.

 

[MotherFerJones]

try getting CCleaner from piriform, run the drive wipe, but tell it to only wipe the free space.

 

[dissemble2discover]

try getting CCleaner from piriform, run the drive wipe, but tell it to only wipe the free space.

Ok, so I am running the drive wipe function of Ccleaner to wipe the free space; but I'm not liking the wait time...

But, it's in progress now, so I'll just let it run for 2 hours. If this doesn't recover my lost free space after a restart, is there any other solution you can suggest?

Anyone else have a solution they can suggest for me to try? I'm willing to try anything to get this drive space back without formatting it again...

 

[MotherFerJones]

did it work or are you boned?

 

[dissemble2discover]

did it work or are you boned?

Yes, I was able to get my machine to pick the lost disk space. Windows found free space marked as "Allocated" and just removed that mark and the hard drive now knows the space is not truly allocated.

I see my space back in my drive after running Check Disk


Thanks everyone for giving me solutions to try.

 

[dissemble2discover]

Best answer selected by dissemble2discover.