Over 200 gigs used, can only account for 27 gigs.

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Cind3rs

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May 12, 2013
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Hi all,

fresh install on a 1 TB HDD. It's an older drive (like 8 years old) and was just meant to hold a fresh install in order to slide it over to a new drive.

Had to install Windows Vista, then use my upgrade disk to Win 7.

A few programs, but nothing out of the ordinary. Basically a few days old fresh install.

I'm trying to adjust the partition but it says I have files at the 800 gb mark and cannot shrink below that.

-Did a disk defrag, no change.
-Tried partition magic, that's when I noticed it says I have 250 gbs used on this disk.
-Showed hidden files, unchecked "hide protected system files"
-I can account for 27 gbs in all of C:\
-Both Win 7 AND Partition Wizard show 250 gbs being used.

I need help finding these hidden files. I must shrink this volume down to 120 gigs to image it over to another drive. Please help, I appreciate your wisdom!
 
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Why didn't you just install on the new drive?
Instead of on the old drive, then moving it over.

Secondly, most of the recent cloning operations don't care about partition size, or where they are on the disk.
Just the actual used space.

Macrium Reflect, for instance.
 
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The Vista install and then to Win 7 is painful. Super painful. Like 5 hours of pain trying to get Vista running with drivers just to use keyboard and mouse and Wireless, then Sp1 and various updates that are slow going. When that's done, have to do Win 7 for another hour or more, plus the SP1 there and updates.

But the real problem is that the disk imagers think that there is 250 gigs to image.

 
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WinDirStat found it. System Volume Information folder is 150 gigs. Working on how to remove that (the method google found was stop all active services, take ownership, then delete is not working)
 
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Thanks a lot guys, you saved me! In the end, that WinDirStat showed the hidden information (I had done a "properties" in Win 7 on the system volume information folder and it gave me false information). WinDirStat seems like an awesome tool in itself. Ok, so it was hidden system restore points from Vista all the way to Win 7, I think. It was eating up 150 gigs!

So the easiest way was to go into System Protection and turn off restore points and click the "delete" button there to remove them all.

Solved!

Thanks again, I hope this helps someone else one day.
 
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