Huge chunk of Hard Drive Free Space Missing

[Layback Bear]

ignatzatsonic I like the direction you are thinking.

Windows 7 is reporting the space is being used.
Windows 7 just doesn't know what is using the space.
I don't even believe a defrag will work properly unless the is 10% free space on the drive. Which their isn't (0%)

We are going to keep going in circles until we know the exact hardware your system has. We need to see so their is no more confusion.

This little program will help.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/311593-speccy-publish-snapshot-your-system-specs.html

What games you have played means nothing. What games are installed and where did they come from and how.
That needs to be answered. So please answer where and how did you get the games.

After follow the suggestion that ignatzatsonic and I have made could you send about 200 gb of games to a external hard drive

***Windows 7 is not going to do anything properly until it gets some elbow room.

 

[Ken Silver]

Okay. Okay. I think I follow.

Here is the link from Speccy: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/virssDpudrI55PXme8ZvdO8

Sorry I don't know the specifics.

As for the games I downloaded, all of them were from their official sites or Steam. You say it doesn't matter which games. So they were all downloaded from the game(s) website or steam.

That said, I'm going to just remove all the games I can from my hard drive and re-install them later once/if this gets settled. But I'm shocked if I actually have 200GB in games. I'll do what I can to free up as much space as I can. Once again, thanks for the assistance.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Notice that Speccy says the Seagate has zero capacity and that the Samsung has 961 GB. Clearly wrong.

I'd at least download Seagate's "Seatools" program to test the drive.

 

[Ken Silver]

Okay. Downloaded Seatools and the drive DID pass the Short Drive Self Test and the S.M.A.R.T. Check. Should I run the other test?

And I have freed up 84 GB of space. Should I free up more? I know you guys were throwing out the 200GB number. Though I am surprised that so many games I never play took up so much space. Then again, I did plan on having 917 GB to play with.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I'd run all tests.

What did you do to recover the 84 GB? Do you mean you just deleted stuff you didn't need?

Do you still have the 600 GB yellow unaccounted for?

 

[Ken Silver]

Small update.

I tested the wrong drive at first. During the 1st bootup of SeaTools, the main (C) drive didn't even show up. But it did the second time. The SSD is the smaller one and persumed D: Drive.

The D drive has passed all of it's test.

The C drive popped up with an extra option right away called "Fix All".

I haven't clicked Fix All yet. Want to wait before I jump ahead.

Also, all the space recovered is just from deleting games off my computer. The giant yellow section still lives.

 

[Ken Silver]

Update. The C Drive did indeed fail the Long Generic test. It ALSO failed the Fix All test. So... it recommends I download SeaTools DOS. So I am going to do that and see what that tool can do for me.

Update # 2 - Holy Cow. I have to burn it to a disk before I can even use SeaTools for DOS. Wow. My hard drive must be in bad shape.

I am going to wait to hear from everyone before I go and do that. But it seems that my hard drive is actually shot. It's 5 AM where I live so I think I'll go to bed and see what to do in the morning.

I might have to buy a new computer after all. This computer has last me a long time. It might be cheaper in the long run to just get new gaming laptop.

Once again, thank you everyone for the advice. I'll be back to take any suggestions to heart.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

If you decide to buy all new hardware, I'd be careful about the hard drive situation--depending on budget.

Maybe you can get just one internal drive--a standard SSD, nothing cute like you have now.

And you'll have to come to a decision on the operating system. If you want Windows 10, you'll have to decide if you want to buy with 10 already installed (probably can't do that yet) or buy with 7 or 8 or 8.1 installed and then "free upgrade" to 10. I'd probably try to do the latter in case I hated 10.

 

[Ken Silver]

If you decide to buy all new hardware, I'd be careful about the hard drive situation--depending on budget.

Maybe you can get just one internal drive--a standard SSD, nothing cute like you have now.

And you'll have to come to a decision on the operating system. If you want Windows 10, you'll have to decide if you want to buy with 10 already installed (probably can't do that yet) or buy with 7 or 8 or 8.1 installed and then "free upgrade" to 10. I'd probably try to do the latter in case I hated 10.

Thanks for the info. I will probably buy Win7 or Win8 and then just take the free upgrade. But I wanted a SSD for peformance. I never intended to end up with Dual Hard Drives like this... nor am I sold on SSHD. But regular HDD are bad for me because I have to move my computer alot, I do a lot of traveling. Hmm...

If I could find a decently priced Gaming Laptop with at least a decent sized SDD, that'd be amazing. But we'll have to see. I totally need to sleep on it, though I am about 75% sure this laptop I am using now is toast. It never gave me a problem in all the years I had it... I can't be too mad about it dying on me now. It's the timing that's killing me.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

That's still quite a strong CPU you have. It scores 7475 on the Passmark CPU benchmark, so I'm guessing you paid quite a lot for that machine.

That's a higher score than a quite recent Intel i5-4670.

"decently priced gaming laptop" may be impossible to find, depending on your definition of the first two terms. Maybe you can afford to spend high and don't have the same expectations that a desktop gamer would have. In which case, you should be OK, but I don't know how much better it would be as a gaming machine than what you have now. Mostly dependent on the graphics capability, just like desktops.

 

[Ken Silver]

My father knew a guy who was selling Lenovo laptops and back then, the brand had just become Lenovo after having been IBM for so long... so I got it at a discount. But now... my situation is not exactly the same. I won't be getting a similar deal.

And while I know this is slightly off topic of the thread, would the ASUS ROG be a good replacement for my computer? It's slightly above what I want to pay and it's flashy too, but I think it's specs are on par with what I have now (and then including that age has set in on my current laptop).

ASUS ROG G751JL-DS71 Gaming Laptop 4th Generation Intel Core i7 4720HQ (2.60GHz) 16GB Memory 1TB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M 2 GB GDDR5 17.3" Windows 8.1 64-Bit - Newegg.com

That is the computer I am looking at. If you have any ideas or opinions on a replacement top, I'd greatly appreciate it.

This computer issue has been a pain and has kept me up the last few nights, but I am finally ready to move on from it. And the help of this forum has played a big part in that. I can't say I didn't give my current laptop all I could to try to fix it within reasonable means.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

The processor in the Asus ROG scores 8161 on the Passmark CPU benchmark, slightly better than the 7475 for the Lenovo, but likely not enough to be noticeable.

The video chip on the Asus ROG (GeForce GTX 965M) scores 2744 on the Passmark video benchmark.

The Lenovo website says that the Y580 includes the GTX 660M video chip, which scores 1453 on the Passmark video benchmark. So the ROG video score is nearly twice the Lenovo score.

I’m not a gamer, so I cannot tell you how noticeable those 2 benchmark improvements might be, but the ROG would appear to be superior, particularly as regards video performance.

Having said that……………….

Have you outright rejected the idea of simply replacing the hard drive(s) in the Lenovo?

Superficially at least, the Lenovo appears to be operating OK other than hard drives, in which case you’d save a lot of money by simply replacing the drive. And possibly buying a new operating system if you had to---I don’t know if you currently have a Windows installation disc.

That “OEM” partition on the Lenovo is most likely intended to restore that machine to factory state. Have you given up on exploring that?

Did you run Seatools in DOS mode? I’m just wondering if you’ve come to a final conclusion regarding your hard drives?

Since you have that oddball hard drive setup with a spinner plus the “SSD” on a card, you may be a candidate for examination by a good laptop repair outfit. Have you ruled that out?

I’m guessing that even though you now have that oddball hard drive setup, you could nevertheless install one ordinary hard drive to replace them both—either a spinner or a true SSD. But my laptop knowledge is minimal, so that may not be possible. A Lenovo specialist would know.

Maybe you can afford a new machine and just want to move on---that’s fine too. I’ve been known to do that.

 

[Layback Bear]

If it was me I would get rid of the half breed drive and install a real 1 TB hard drive with a Clean Install.
At that point you could use the laptop or sell it.
If you have the desire and money you could install 1 TB SSD.

SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE1T0BW 2.5" 1TB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Newegg.com

 

[Ken Silver]

Thanks for the input ignatzatsonic and Layback Bear. It has been a big help.

But I have decided against replacing the Hard Drive in the Lenovo. Here is why:

- In order to run SeaTools for DOS, I need to burn the ISO file to a disk (or alternatively run it on a USB drive). So I haven't been able to do it in the last 24 hours.

- That said, the Lenovo has other issues. But they are mostly hardware. Battery life is less then an hour; a few keys on the keyboard have a subpar response time and last but certainly not least, the adhesive on the right side of the computer has been eroding at the junction where the LED screen, DVD-R , USB port and Plug Socket meet. The computer still runs well thanks to the constant maintenance I've run on it, but it's far from perfect. At best, the laptop is in "Fair" condition.

- I could look for a local repair shop and have them handle things from here on out. But combining all the other problems with the hard drive and I am pretty close to the price of buying a new laptop. That and I must remember that I would be paying that price to fix an older laptop. I think at that point, it would be cheaper to just re-purchase the same type of laptop I have now. I saw it online at either Newegg or Amazon for less then $400 USD.

With all of those options considered, I think I'll just buy a new Laptop and then sell this one to someone who is willing to work on it and bring it up to snuff. Or even use it for parts (though this is a laptop and not a desktop, so selling it as a whole might be better for me.) I am sure that the current issue is fixable by either wiping/reformatting or getting a new hard drive. But considering the laptop's age and all, it is time to just move on.

I even tried to install Windows 10 as a work around to some of this hassle (out of sheer curiosity), but it wouldn't even install. I am taking that as confirmation that my time with this Lenovo is done. It has served me well.

If anything, I'll do what Layback suggested and see if I can make some money back.

And pending that the ASUS ROC I linked above is NOT a frankendrive (SSHD), I'll be ordering one this week.

So all in all, thanks. It felt good working on a computer again (albeit my own personal one.) I'll mark this issue as closed in a day or two, just in case anyone else has anything to add to the discussion.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

The $1200 Asus ROG laptop in your link would appear to have a standard spinning 1 TB 7200 rpm drive.

I realize laptops are more expensive and compromises by definition, but I'd hate to pay $1200 for any computing device that did not have a true SSD.

They're not a big factor in gaming, but contribute significantly to overall response and customer satisfaction. If $1200 is your absolute top limit, you might want to price an SSD-equipped machine with a less powerful CPU if necessary.

 

[Ken Silver]

That's how I feel honestly. But... I have had a hard time finding a good gaming laptop with a true SSD. I will look some more though. Because a SSD is the way to go. That said, SSD are not cheap. And while I understand that, finding a gaming laptop with a decent sized SSD is hard. I would hope for a 1TB SSD but I might have to settle for 500GB. I don't want to go any lower. I'm going to look right now just to be sure. Before I buy the ASUS ROC.

 

[erenseymen]

Ken Silver,
Thanks for this thread.

I also have a Lenovo Y580. After trying (installing&uninstalling) Kaspersky Free Antivirus, I had strange problems on my computer. (remaining Kaspersky drivers, can't install new drivers, etc.) I got rid of Kaspersky remainings. Then I tried to run "sfc /scannow" and "DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth" to restore my windows files but both failed. Then I ran Chkdsk and it reported "110031176 KB in bad sectors". I've lost 104 GB of my free space after chkdsk.

I've been searching for a solution and found this thread. Because there is no solution in this thread, I won't bother to fix it. This thread eases my pain.

 

[Megahertz07]

Welcome to the forum erenseymen.

If check disk found 110031176 KB in bad sectors your disk is dying. Save your data ASAP to an external disk.
My suggestion is to buy a SSD.
If you have a large amount of data, you can buy a small SSD (128G) for windows and programs and a HDD for data.To install the HDD you replace the CD/ DVD with a HDD caddy.
You will have the speed of a SSD and the space of a HDD at low cost.

 

[erenseymen]

Megahertz07 thank you but buying a new hard disk is not a good suggestion for me. I've already got rid of windows and installed Ubuntu linux. My data wasn't important. If my data was important, I wouldn't save it in Windows anyway. I'm exploring (again) linu world again. Thx.