Solved Random Gain of 9-10 Gigabytes, Want to Know if Assumptions Correct

[KevinLancaster]

I have a 320 GB hard-drive with several bad sectors that I was going to repair with HDD Regenerator, but I heard that it sometimes has bad results so I decided to clone the drive before using it. Unfortunately, Clonezilla failed and managed to damage an unknown amount of files on the drive shortly after starting the cloning process. Windows stopped starting up properly, not recognizing my account's administrator status and not loading any programs at all upon login, including explorer.exe. After several failed attempts at fixing the drive with Chkdsk and Startup Repair, I finally decided to re-install Windows on another hard-drive.

However after I re-installed, I noticed that the free space on the older drive had suddenly increased from about 44 GB to about 53 GB. In checking my personal files it seems the majority of them are there. However, the Windows folder on that drive is only 14 GB. Coupled with the bugs I experienced, and the fact that the minimum hard-drive space needed for W7 64-bit is 20 GB, my theory is that at least 6 GB of original W7 system files disappeared, while an additional 3 GB from System Restore points, various programs integrated into the system like C++ Redistributable and .NET Framework, Updates, the WinSXS folder, temporary/miscellaneous files (though probably few since I use C-Cleaner often) and etc. were lost as well.

Is this plausible based on what I've described? I haven't gone into the system folders often and I'm not sure if what I'm saying makes sense.

 

[Victor S]

Unless you had "before" file pictures of the bad drive, you can't tell.
My Win 7 64-bit "Windows" folder is 15.2gb, so your 20gb assumption is wrong.
That folder size can widely vary, for example by running cleanup of service packs.
Speculating about undocumented files sizes won't get you anywhere.
But it can be fun digging in and learning about it, so I encourage that. You appear to be curious enough to get into that.
Make sure you make system imaging a habit if you do get into making system changes and experimenting. That removes all the danger, provides previous pictures of what you had, etc. It's a real good habit even if you don't experiment.
Would have saved you the problems you ran into with cloning.

 

[KevinLancaster]

How long have you had Windows on your computer? With my fresh install my Windows folder was about your size, and I feel that 14.5 GB is abnormal for a system that had been used for three years with all updates installed.

What is system imaging and how do you do it?

Additional questions from another forum I posted this on:

The thing is HDD Regenerator only marked 486 MB as bad, so I'm not entirely sure how 10 GB disappeared. I haven't checked in detail, but do you guys think that it's likely that the majority of lost data was from the Windows folder? I'd been using that drive for 3+ years at that point, though I usually cleared temp files using C-Cleaner and never went into hibernation.

Both HD Tune and HDD Regenerator found the bad sectors early on in their scans, and since I was having slow start-ups I figured the files that were stored there were system files. Since Clonezilla failed so early on, is it likely that most of my personal files were not damaged?

Also SeaTools began detecting errors around sector 6221840, I figure that would be around 6 MB in, and I'm not sure but are harddrive sectors arranged from oldest to newest? If they are than it's even more possible that mainly system files were lost.

 

[Victor S]

I've had this Win 7 almost 3 years. It has SP1, but I did a cleanup after installing that, and got back 3-4 gb. I have most the critical updates up until a few months ago.
Can't answer questions about HD sectors. I just toss a hard drive as soon as it has a mechanical problem. The magnets are good for finding drywall screws/nails.
If the old drive is still readable, I suggest using a "tree size" utility to narrow the differences in old vs new drives if you pursue that.
Here's a tutorial on imaging.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html?filter[2]=Backup Restore
There's plenty on this forum about imaging, and many willing to answer questions.

 

[KevinLancaster]

What clean-up tools do you use?

My old drive is still readable, and the majority of my personal files are still accessible. I'm not quite sure if it is a mechanical problem; the whole thing started a month ago when the computer came back from standby and was frozen. I'm guessing the tree size utility can't find changes in hard drive data unless it's analysed the drive before though, right?

 

[Victor S]

It can only read what the drive is capable of reading. You would have to compare what it sees to your working system, since you don't have an original picture.
But it quickly reveals wide directory size differences so you can drill down.
You may be able to more quickly find missing files on that old drive. Especially obvious would be missing files you determine are necessary for Win 7 to work properly.
I think I said you'll never find all that got hammered by the failing drive, and I wouldn't bother doing it myself. But it might satisfy your curiosity.
Personally, I only care about Win files when I want to streamline the system for imaging. If I have any problem with Win, I just restore an image.
It's really simple to image. The tutorial I linked has to provide a lot of detail because that's the nature of a tutorial.
To cut to the chase, if you download the WinPE Macrium ISO file whs has generously provided, burn it to a CD/DVD, and have a spare drive, you can be practicing imaging in half an hour.
After another half hour of practice, you can be restoring Win 7 in 5 minutes, and never have to reinstall it again.

 

[KevinLancaster]

So I installed TreeSize Free to analyse my drives. Seems I was mistaken earlier on about my Windows folder.

I found that the System Volume Information folder on the old drive seems to be empty in comparison to my new one, but my new one only seems to be half a gig. Also, I can only see it with special options turned on, and it didn't factor into the used space in properties until I turned those options on. Do you think the loss/corruption of files in that folder had an adverse effect on proper reporting of hard-drive space? Also, could you check the size of your folder in comparison (because I'm not sure how much that folder changes over the course of 3 years; it would also be helpful if you could check the size of your Recovery, Documents and Settings, and PerfLogs folders as well).

EDIT: I just realized something strange: TreeSize Free reports that a fresh install of Windows on the new drive takes up 19 GB, but disk usage in properties reports that only 14.5 GB is taken up. However, if I select all folders including hidden system ones on the drive, I only get 11.0 GB. I would have to include either the page file or the hibernation file to get the number that is reported in properties. So my question is, what exactly does Windows choose to include/omit in that calculation?

 

[DavidE]

Have you run a System File Check to see if you have any errors that can be fixed?

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

 

[KevinLancaster]

Whenever I tried using SFC /SCANNOW through the Windows disk, it says there's a repair in progress and that the computer needs to be restarted. Startup Repair reports everything as okay even though it isn't, so it wasn't any help. When I tried running SFC /SCANNOW after startup, it didn't work either since my account wasn't recognized by the system as an Administrator account, and I couldn't get it to start in Administrator mode as far as I could tell since Windows Explorer wasn't starting up properly and therefore the menus and such weren't showing.

EDIT: Hopefully good news, the old drive seemed to have booted up properly in Safe Mode after I re-wrote the MBR to the disk using TestDisk, ran a ChkDsk, and used HDD Regenerator to fix the corrupt sectors. However, there seem to be strange things happening, most prominent of which programs which I had installed on the new system on the other drive appearing on the desktop of the old one.

EDIT2: Nope, didn't really seem to work, my old drive gets stuck at a "Personalized Settings: Web Platform Customizations Window", and I think SFC tried to change the files on my other drive. I might un-plug the other drive and try SFC again, but I don't really feel like fixing the other drive anymore and I'm quite fearful that what I do might make the situation worse. I do not have an alternate backup drive either.

 

[DavidE]

It sounds like you have a lot more system problems than just the free space issue.
When you installed Windows on the new HD was that the ONLY HD connected?
If the old HD was connected during the install to the new HD that can cause problems.

I would re-install windows on the new HD with ONLY that HD connected.
Take a look at this tutorial by gregrocker.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html

 

[KevinLancaster]

It was the only HD connected, but I think the problem is that I tried to clone the old copy of Windows over earlier on, it another copy of Windows recognized by my older drive.

 

[Victor S]

I've found the bet bet is to discard troublesome drives. Sure, drives cost, but they're not the expense they once were. When you add up the time and possible data loss a troublesome drive can cause, it's not worth keeping one after sectors start going bad. I will say I haven't had many drives fail. But every one just got worse after sectors failed, and couldn't be trusted.
I'd probably do diagnostics as you are doing. Can't even recall when I last did it.
Unless you're sure you are navigating correctly when using disk diagnostic and repair tools, it's best to have only the problem drive connected and use a tool that resides on a CD/DVD/Stick. Protect your working system HD.
To answer your file size questions, my sysvol files are empty. I don't use Win system recovery or hibernate. Every file is easily seen when you set your Explorer option to show hidden files.
Right now I trust Win Explorer to show all files and correctly report sizes.
I just discovered a discrepancy between the Windows folder properties when using Power Desk Pro 8.5 (which is my main file manager) and Explorer.
PD Pro shows a gig and +2000 files less than Explorer, though it looks like it's using the same Win call - the properties window is identical anyway.
Until/if I figure that out I'll trust Explorer properties.
There's a massive number of files in my Windows folder (72,776 Files, 14,944 Folders) and you need good extraction/parsing tools to sort discrepancies between different reporting tools. You might find discrepancies in byte counts and maybe total files with different tools. Byte discepancies are pretty common in my experience, and probably due to rounding, but I think this is the first time I've seen misreported file counts, so I'm disappointed in PD Pro.
I suggest trusting Explorer for byte/file counts. I've never heard of it misreporting, but could be wrong.
Anyway, did you look into imaging? Best thing since sliced bread.

 

[KevinLancaster]

Quick question about SFC, to scan a Windows directory on another drive you use the offline function right? I was testing it and I used the command "SFC /verifyonly /offbootdir=e:\ /offwindir=e:\windows".

 

[DavidE]

i've only used SFC for the "C:" partition i booted with, so i can't answer your last question.

i'm not sure exactly what all you have done .
maybe you are booting from the old HD?
did you change to boot priority to use the new HD with the clean install as the boot device?
maybe you didn't clean the "cloned Win 7 installation" HD prior to doing a clean install on the new HD, and that is the problem now?

i would

1) clean the new HD - here is a tutorial by Brink
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/52129-disk-clean-clean-all-diskpart-command.html

2) Get and run the Manufactures HD diagnostic utility to make sure the new HD is not defective.

3) do a clean install following the tutorial by gregrocker i gave you earlier
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html

 

[w1dpc]

c:\windows
size 18.5GB (19,967,931,369bytes)
size on disk 18.7GB (20,115,978,916bytes)
contains 73,775 files 15,972 folders

this is my windows folder after a year of use. just to show how each user could be different.

 

[KevinLancaster]

I was booting from the new HD, I made sure in the boot menu, and I'd already run diagnostics on it before I tried cloning just in case it had errors. I think all the weirdness was from the partial cloning and the fact that the Windows 7 Installation only performs a Quick Format. After the cloning failed (and before I reinstalled Windows on the new drive), when I booted up it gave me two options for Windows, the first of which was broken because it was on "another device" and the second was also broken because of all the errors I described previously. I think after I reinstalled it recognize the new installation as the first copy of Windows which led to those strange follow-up events.

Just making sure of something here for future reference, the device-to-device option in Clonezilla copies right? I hope it wasn't moving files instead, because then it would be a case of sheer ignorance on my part.

Anyways, back to the hard-drive: After I ran SFC in safe mode with both drives connected, when I tried starting up my old drive again in safe mode for some strange reason it shut down. Afterwards I tried starting it in regular mode and as I mentioned earlier, it got stuck at the Personalized Settings window. I started up my new hard-drive and found files on it and I figured the system was trying to repair the other copy of Windows. I decided to unplug my new hard-drive and startup my old one alone in safe mode. I managed to get into an Administrator level Command Prompt and run SFC; however, it only got to 10% and failed. I restarted into regular mode to see if anything had changed, but nope. When I Ctrl-Alt-Deleted to Shut Down however, I noticed that Windows was trying to download and install updates, something which I didn't necessarily want with the state my hard-drive was in. So I let Windows install the one update as it was shutting down, and then I removed my USB Wireless Internet Adapter. I started the computer up yet again, and this time it managed to get past the Personalized Settings window, though Explorer didn't start up (something I thought was strange was that the process for the Personalized Settings windows was actually Explorer!) so I started it up manually though the Task Manager. However, I was logged on to a temporary account and I couldn't open any folders or programs; I shut down the computer again.

Then I had an idea: I was going to run SFC off my new copy of Windows and analyse my old one, but to make sure my older one did not interfere I had to have it unplugged at start-up. I enabled AHCI so I could plug it afterwards. To make sure the program didn't confuse errors between the two drives, I made sure that my new copy of Windows had no errors at all (weirdly enough, it had some). So I plugged in my old drive, ran SFC on it, and then... it didn't work.

The final idea I had was a simple one. I was just going to try and figure out my what data I lost again. Since Victor doesn't use Windows' in-built backup mechanics, I had no idea how much space the System Volume Information folder uses up for System Restore over three years. So I had my friend install TreeSize Free on his 3+ year old PC with Windows 7, and lo and behold, his folder took up 9.5 GB whereas the one on my old drive took up less than 100 MB. This result was actually hinted at earlier in my endeavours as Startup Repair reported no restore points whereas I knew I had many, since I never changed any of System Restore's settings and had been installing and un-installing various hard-drive analysis programs recently. Therefore, thankfully the only thing I lost was a few restore points.

I will probably perform a clean install and look into disk imaging in the near future. For now though, the original issue is effectively SOLVED.



Quick Edit: w1dpc, I actually found out my Windows folder on my old drive was actually 28 GB; I had closed the Properties window before it finished updating the first time because I thought it was done.

 

[w1dpc]

lol i did that once or twice myself. this time i waited for the thing to end.