312 GB of disappeared space (unknown element) on Seagate ST1000DM003

Archer.pl · November 28, 2014

Hi

About a week ago I started noticing disappearing space on my hard drive. The first time it was 10 GB, then I uninstalled a game that weight about the same and restarted computer. Another 10 GB instead of appearing, disappeared. 3 days ago I noticed lost of about 50 GB of free space. I wasn't downloading or installing anything. I think that during that time I lost jointly 100 GB of space.

I installed WinDirStat to see if some enormous files were created on my drive and I noticed something interesting. WinDirStat says that I have occupied only 530 GB of drive, when My Computer says it's 837 GB.

What can be wrong?

I attached SMART of the drive.

Ryukrieger · November 29, 2014

Can you try checking Computer Management (Control Panel => Administrative Tools => Computer Management), the "Disk Management" section?

It should show you the space of your disk and its partitions. This is a behaviour I have not encountered, however.

Archer.pl · November 29, 2014

Disk menagment says that the disk is Healthy (boot, page file, active, crash dump, primary partition).

I checked "Shown unknown elements" option in WinDirStat. And a 312 GB monster showed.

Some other strange things are also happening.

I noticed that three dates of last modyfication that WinDirStat shows are crazy (disk C - 2077, windows.old - 2039) ...

And three days ago on bottom right corner I saw "windows copy is not original" notification (I HAVE ORIGINAL WINDOWS) - I almost noticed it because it was white text on my bright background (Yes!, it hasn't changed to black background). And the computer properties were showing that the copy is activated and original. It disappeared next day.