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when i check my hard drive properties it says i have used exactly 10 gig. when i highlight everything in it (including hidden and system files) and check those properties it says they all ad up to 5.24 gigs.
what do i belief and why the huge difference?
Do you have "View Hidden Files" turned on?
You probably aren't selecting the hidden folders in your drive. Unless otherwise specified, Windows will store pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys and other large system files in your drive's root directory as hidden files.
The one folder, though that's most likely to be causing such a large disparity is your volume info folder, where it stores all of your XP restore points. It's probably several gigabytes.
Don't forget about system restore points.
Those generally hide out in System Volume Information (AFAIK) and are not normally accessible.
Yeah, if you want to include the size of the System Volume Information folders, you need to add read access for your own user account, since on NTFS partitions, not even admins can see the contents by default, only the system account. Fine on FAT32 though, due to lack of security permissions in that file system :p
i have view hidden files turned on.
Protected operating system files are still hidden unless explicitly turned on.
And files you can't see due to security permissions blocking you won't appear with hidden files displayed either.