my 456g internal drive is saying i only have 38g of space left.. How can this b when I can only find 40gigs worth of DATA

[steveamoeba]

Ok..

When i look at my internal drive usage gauge in the my PC window.

The gauge reader (which is normally blue) is showing red. This is OSC drive C: and is approx 500G in capacity.
When I open it leaving the mouse hanging on any of its content folders it displays the size of the files.. They, in there entirety, add up to a mere 40G.. How comes my drive is so full and how do I reduce it to an acceptable size without knowing where all of this space is being used?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, steveamoeba.

I'd suggest that you check out this article here: http://www.howtogeek.com/125923/7-ways-to-free-up-hard-disk-space-on-windows/. It will help you free up some disk space and more importantly, to analyze the HDD's content and find out what exactly is filling up your storage capacity. It has a lot of useful tips, but don't hesitate to ask if any other questions come up.
Other than that, it might be a good idea to run a full scan with your antivirus program.

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

 

[hang-the-9]

There are probably a lot more things on the drive that you can see or you are looking at the wrong place. Install a program called WinDir stat, it's listed in the article linked above. That will show you what is using up disk space and where.