I have 20 missing gigs

So I was losing alot of space (and I dont download much my largest programs are flash and ps)..I check all my folders and I get 213 gigs of space left. Well my hdd says 194. Something is wrong...I am losing too much space for what I do..

Help please
Nick

A lot is two words. Not one.

As for your problem, reformat. Solves everything

The operating system and other underlying executables sometimes take up a lot of space.

But yeah, yours is a huge difference. Try restarting, it may update the number.

Is your hard drive partioned? This could be the issue. Also note that HDD don't actually have the full volume that they say they do, for example a 320gig hd only has 300gig of usable space. Window's usually makes mistake's the size of the disk's because it doesn't update that often. Well it's the same with most os's anyway

The actual size of a file is not the same size it takes on the disk, due to disks using blocks of data to store.

Most hard drives advertise 1 gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes, not 1,073,741,825. Since bits work in 8's, not 10's the math is different then we are used to. But that shouldn't account for all those missing gigabytes, you probably have some unpartitioned space.

No I have a 250 gig. I am actually calculating 232 minus all the files on my hard drive (ctrl click all folders then properties) I get 20 gig. I should have 212 gigs left, but I have 194. Weird.

@Broken I know I always spell it that way

Don't ctrl click on all of the folders, right click on the actual drive and click properties. That should give you a proper reading.

Originally Posted by BrokenFaith A lot is two words. Not one. As for your problem, reformat. Solves everything

HAH, what i said.

Originally Posted by Steven Fergus Don't ctrl click on all of the folders, right click on the actual drive and click properties. That should give you a proper reading.

That is proper. Thing is I am losing space when doing nothing at all. (Got home and lost 3 gigs)