Wrong hard disk usage indicated

[archvile]

Im on my uncles pc at the moment and ive encountered a problem ive seen before. He has a 40 gig hd, partitioned into two drives, one 14.6 and one 23.6..
the 14.6 drive says that abt 11 gb are used and 3.6 free...but this is not the case as ive checked the entire drive ant the contents probably amount to abt 3 gb total. What accoutns for windows readin that more space is used than that which is actually used? I think i over came thos prob a while before but cant seem to rem how i fixed it, on a different pc btw

[opium]

aight what happens is some programs hide hidden folders that not even show hidden files show

best way to get back all the lost hard drive space is "format" de mc

u dont need to kill partitions and stuff just back up and format

[archvile]

din wanna format it yuh know...ah well is nuh my pc heheh

[Paradoxxx]

I had similar encounters, not to say its exactly the same problems you are having. I would do a check with hidden files shown and the total would not add up to what it should be.

I did some 'stuff' with encryption before that required me to do a full scan disk on the drive and I think thats where the space was locked.

As opium mentioned, format itmc.