HD / "Free Space" Mystery

[Torquemada]

I have a pretty sound system. PIII running at 1Ghz on Win XP with 512 RAM.

I have 2 HDs on the PC.

One is 10 GB, divided into 2 virtual drives (c: and e:)

The other is 80 GB, divided in 2 virtual drives (d: and f:)

Both HDs are NTFS partitioned with no compression.

The root system files are on the c:\ drive, small disk (the 10 GB drive.)

Now, on the 80 GB drive something very strange happens. According to the
defrag program, the d: drive has a large clump of "free space for system
use" at the beginning of the d:\ drive.

No such thing appears on any of the other drives or partitions, not even on
the c: drive where the root directory and Windows files are located.

In trying to figure out why this large clump of unusable space is on the HD,
I changed the partition from NTFS to FAT 32 and the mystery "free space"
vanished, only to reappear when I changed back to NTFS.

Can someone please tell me why the mystery "free space" and if there is a
way to minimize this wasted space on the HD or get rid of it altogether?

Thanks in advance...

E

[relic]

Torquemada wrote:
> I have a pretty sound system. PIII running at 1Ghz on Win XP with 512
> RAM.
>
> I have 2 HDs on the PC.
>
> One is 10 GB, divided into 2 virtual drives (c: and e:)
>
> The other is 80 GB, divided in 2 virtual drives (d: and f:)
>
> Both HDs are NTFS partitioned with no compression.
>
> The root system files are on the c:\ drive, small disk (the 10 GB
> drive.)
>
> Now, on the 80 GB drive something very strange happens. According to
> the defrag program, the d: drive has a large clump of "free space for
> system use" at the beginning of the d:\ drive.
>
> No such thing appears on any of the other drives or partitions, not
> even on the c: drive where the root directory and Windows files are
> located.
>
> In trying to figure out why this large clump of unusable space is on
> the HD, I changed the partition from NTFS to FAT 32 and the mystery
> "free space" vanished, only to reappear when I changed back to NTFS.
>
> Can someone please tell me why the mystery "free space" and if there
> is a way to minimize this wasted space on the HD or get rid of it
> altogether?
>
> Thanks in advance...

Using Speed Disk? Perhaps a better Defrag program is called for. Try the
fully functional free trial of VoptXP:
http://www.vopt.com/download.htm

--
- relic -
There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.