Emptied D: Drive but some space is still occupied

[alphab1]

Hi,

My first query here. I completely emptied the D: drive (data) on my Lenovo PC running OS Win7 but 2Gb out of 100Gb is sill not free. There are no hidden folders as I made sure from Folder Options in Control Panel.

Before emptying I used this drive for storing back up folders. I also emptied the Recycle BIn after Disk Clean Up. Although I am not short of space I think I should understand the reason to avoid future problems.

Thanks.
alpha

[foundone]

How are you telling that 2GB is in use? I'd imagine it's gone to internal structures such as space maps, indexing etc. The recycle bin can often have a structure on the drive even when showing as empty and I've often seen content in there which needs deleting manually.

Have you tried reformatting the drive?

[quelquod]

Have you emptied the recycle bin?

<oops - preempted>

[Breelander]

I completely emptied the D: drive (data) on my Lenovo PC running OS Win7 but 2Gb out of 100Gb is sill not free. There are no hidden folders as I made sure from Folder Options in Control Panel.

Is there a 'System Volume Information' hidden folder? this is a hidden System file that Windows uses to store a number of thing it doesn't want you to mess with. For instance, on your 'Windows' drive this is where your Restore Points are kept. As your D: drive is now 'empty', the easiest way to clear the 'System Volume Information' is to reformat your D: drive - this will create a new 'System Volume Information' folder with minimal data stored in it.

[Breelander]

I completely emptied the D: drive (data) on my Lenovo PC running OS Win7 but 2Gb out of 100Gb is sill not free. There are no hidden folders as I made sure from Folder Options in Control Panel.

Is there a 'System Volume Information' hidden folder? this is a hidden System file that Windows uses to store a number of thing it doesn't want you to mess with. For instance, on your 'Windows' drive this is where your Restore Points are kept. As your D: drive is now 'empty', the easiest way to clear the 'System Volume Information' is to reformat your D: drive - this will create a new 'System Volume Information' folder with minimal data stored in it.

[Breelander]

I completely emptied the D: drive (data) on my Lenovo PC running OS Win7 but 2Gb out of 100Gb is sill not free. There are no hidden folders as I made sure from Folder Options in Control Panel.

Is there a 'System Volume Information' hidden folder? this is a hidden System file that Windows uses to store a number of thing it doesn't want you to mess with. For instance, on your 'Windows' drive this is where your Restore Points are kept. As your D: drive is now 'empty', the easiest way to clear the 'System Volume Information' is to reformat your D: drive - this will create a new 'System Volume Information' folder with minimal data stored in it.

[alphab1]

Thank you all.

I found the space still in use by clicking on "Properties" for D:. And I did empty the Recycle Bin.

I will look for the hidden folder as suggested by Bree. If I cannot empty the drive that way I will format it again (NTFS), assuming that the computer does not stop me from doing it .

Cheers.

[robbelg]

No wonder you've got that fancy crown

[Breelander]

No wonder you've got that fancy crown

50+ posts and you'll get one too

[NomoneyNohoney]

Was the drive a boot drive? If so, you may well have a hidden partition with all the boot stuff on it. If you've now deleted that, the drive will be fine as a storage drive, but if ever you try to boot from it and it fails, remember these comments! If that happens, I'll find the documentation I used to make my drive bootable again... three days of struggling that took

[Breelander]

Was the drive a boot drive? If so, you may well have a hidden partition with all the boot stuff on it. If you've now deleted that, the drive will be fine as a storage drive, but if ever you try to boot from it and it fails, remember these comments! If that happens, I'll find the documentation I used to make my drive bootable again... three days of struggling that took

I hope that's not the case here as the OP just said 'cleared the D: drive' (presumably by just deleting files). Even reformatting D: won't affect other partitions. The way to find out if another partition is using space is to open 'Disk Management' (run %windir%\system32\diskmgmt.msc /s or find it as a part of Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Administrative Tools\Computer Management). The partitions to avoid messing with at all costs are the ones with no drive letter (usually marked as 'Recovery partition' - the boot one will also be marked 'Active').

[alphab1]

I wanted to make sure that there were no essential folders on D: (the drive under discussion) such as the Boot folder (?) which might have been inadvertently put in there. So I followed Bree's advice and opened the Disk Management page to see the contents of all the drives on my computer (Disk0).

The four main drives, C: (100.54 GB); D: (100.88 GB); E: (248.97 GB); and Q: (11.86 GB) are all shown as Healthy Primary partitions with only C: having the additional description - Boot, Page File and Crash Dump. There are two other drives: 100 MB EFI system Partition and 2.32 GB Unallocated.

However, clicking on D: still shows 'Emply folder' although Properties show 98 Gb free and 2.79 used.

I have not yet formatted D: to clean up the space. It seems to me this won't cause any problem with the subsequent restarting and running of the computer.

Cheers.
alpha