I recently clean installed Windows 7 Pro 64 bit, and created a separate data partition on the same drive as the system partition, as well as a second internal disk devoted solely to data. I've only saved data to the second disk, but over the past 2 weeks, the data partition on the first one has gone from 74.8 GB free out of 74.9 GB, down to 73.9 GB free. I haven't saved a single file to it, but it's lost 1 GB of space. Any ideas? Thanks.
What kind of data is it? I mean the one taking up space on your data partition.
There are no files, nothing you can see, no hidden files. Just nothing. I can't tell what's taking up the space.
If you have system restore turned on for the misbehaving partition, turn it off. Then do a disk cleanup. then check.
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Go into Advanced System Settings and click the System Protection tab. There you will see if protection is turned ON for the data partition (probably is). If you click the "configure" button you will see how much space is dedicated (as well as used). You can adjust the size or turn it off if you wish.
Open an elevated Command Prompt and type vssadmin list shadowstorage. Then look for the data partition letter and see whether it shows your missing space in allocated. This would be the amount that system restore has grabbed up to now. Maximum would be what it will grab ultimately before reusing the space.
I always keep my shadowstorage (system restore) on my data partition. It is a convenient backup from where I can recover files when one goes MIA. For that I use Shadow Explorer.
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