# C:\\ question, 50 gig drive says 10 gigs free but all the files add up to only 25g what the heck? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 28, 2009, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/c-question-50-gig-drive-says-10-gigs-free-but-all-the-files-add-up-to-only-25g-what-the-heck/522771 "2009-12-28T04:07:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Critical1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Critical1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical1)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/c-question-50-gig-drive-says-10-gigs-free-but-all-the-files-add-up-to-only-25g-what-the-heck/522771/1 "2009-12-28T04:07:45Z")
the title says it all, my 50 gig c drive shows 10 gigs free in my computer but when I open c and do a properties on all the files/folders I only get 25 gigs…and the recycle bin is empty and I just defraged XP Pro is my os. where the heck are 15gigs of files hiding from me? ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/c-question-50-gig-drive-says-10-gigs-free-but-all-the-files-add-up-to-only-25g-what-the-heck/522771/2 "2009-12-28T04:18:36Z")
A. Swap file B. Hibernation file C. Restore points D. Recycle Bin, if you haven’t emptied it. Uncheck “Hide protected operating system files” under folder options to see some of this. ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/c-question-50-gig-drive-says-10-gigs-free-but-all-the-files-add-up-to-only-25g-what-the-heck/522771/3 "2009-12-28T04:21:57Z")
Do you have hidden, unmounted or unformatted partitions? Many computers come pre-configured with a hidden recovery partition, to help when your OS gets corrupted. Install [Acronis Partition Manager](http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/partitioning.html) to manage your partitions. ---
**Author:** ![Critical1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Critical1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical1)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/c-question-50-gig-drive-says-10-gigs-free-but-all-the-files-add-up-to-only-25g-what-the-heck/522771/4 "2009-12-28T05:06:25Z")
thanks guys, I did find 10 more gigs with the “hide protected operating system files” trick. just trying to find some free space for my damn video editor. I think I am just going to reinstall thing on my 1.5tb drive. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/c-question-50-gig-drive-says-10-gigs-free-but-all-the-files-add-up-to-only-25g-what-the-heck/522771/5 "2009-12-28T05:51:58Z")
[Treesize](http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml) is a great free little tool for seeing how much space each folder is taking up on your hard drive. Also, if your C drive is so full that you can’t even find space to install a video editor (which probably takes up no more than a few hundred MB), then you really need to clean it up a bit and move some stuff off it. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/c-question-50-gig-drive-says-10-gigs-free-but-all-the-files-add-up-to-only-25g-what-the-heck/522771/6 "2009-12-28T06:06:39Z")
If one of the hidden files is called hiberfil.sys, that’s your hibernation file. If you don’t wish to use that feature, turn it off and you can regain that space. pagefile.sys is your swap file. If you think your swap size is excessive, you can administer it lower and regain some of that. IIRC, Windows will default your page (swap) file size to the same size as the amount of RAM you have. If you have a large memory configuration, that can be a bit more than you need. ---
**Author:** ![Critical1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Critical1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical1)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/c-question-50-gig-drive-says-10-gigs-free-but-all-the-files-add-up-to-only-25g-what-the-heck/522771/7 "2009-12-28T07:19:47Z")
> [@yabob](#): > > pagefile.sys is your swap file. If you think your swap size is excessive, you can administer it lower and regain some of that. IIRC, Windows will default your page (swap) file size to the same size as the amount of RAM you have. If you have a large memory configuration, that can be a bit more than you need. actually this is the reason I was looking to free up space, this system was built with video editing in mind so I wanted to be sure I had a lot of free space for the swap file to be extra large. problem ends up being solved by upgrading from 8 to 9 ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/c-question-50-gig-drive-says-10-gigs-free-but-all-the-files-add-up-to-only-25g-what-the-heck/522771/8 "2009-12-28T13:32:09Z")
If you want to do a lot of video editing, why not get a big (like a terabyte) SATA internal drive? Video editing can take a lot of RAM and a lot of hard drive space. ---
**Author:** ![Critical1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Critical1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical1)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/c-question-50-gig-drive-says-10-gigs-free-but-all-the-files-add-up-to-only-25g-what-the-heck/522771/9 "2009-12-28T19:28:33Z")
> [@asterion](#): > > If you want to do a lot of video editing, why not get a big (like a terabyte) SATA internal drive? Video editing can take a lot of RAM and a lot of hard drive space. I have one, my set up is a partitioned 160 gig drive where c is about 50, d is about 100, and then e is a 1.5tb drive. the problem I have is that I cant edit my larger files and I have been trying various methods to get this done, so far no real luck. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/c-question-50-gig-drive-says-10-gigs-free-but-all-the-files-add-up-to-only-25g-what-the-heck/522771/10 "2009-12-28T20:09:56Z")
Sorry, missed the post about the E drive. There are also free partition managers out there that allow you to resize partitions on the fly. I used one on my desktop (not there right now and I don’t remember the name) to departition my C: drive as it had extra partitions for triple-booting that I didn’t use anymore. ---
**Author:** ![ducati](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cc9497/32.png) [@ducati](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ducati)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/c-question-50-gig-drive-says-10-gigs-free-but-all-the-files-add-up-to-only-25g-what-the-heck/522771/11 "2009-12-30T18:46:30Z")
I was wondering the same thing about my hard drive. The hiberfil.sys and pagefil.sys are huge. The only way I found that out was a cool program that displays EVERY file graphically, and it’s free! Windirstat is the program; [this](http://windirstat.info/)is the info page - you’ll have to read a bit and find the download appropriate for you, but it’s awesome. You can configure the read-out by size, and start deleting stuff you never knew (or forgot) you had. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/c-question-50-gig-drive-says-10-gigs-free-but-all-the-files-add-up-to-only-25g-what-the-heck/522771/12 "2009-12-30T20:20:02Z")
My favorite program for showing folder sizes is [foldersize](http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/). It will work on Windows XP and 2000, but not Vista. Instead of showing you a graph or picture, it puts the folder sizes in the Details folder view where it belongs.