# Solved: Disk is full when have it isn't



## 4dsmom (Dec 5, 2000)

On a new Windows 7 Computer with 250 gig hard drive, it shows 192 Gigs free out of 
218. I assume the difference of the 218 and 250 is what the OS is using, for we have added very little to the drive. On more than 1 occassion we have received a pop-up saying the disk was full when we tried to save a file we were working on. The latest happening was last evening when my husband was working on a spreadsheet, adding names to his membership list. Adding 2 names and saving after each was no problem. When he added the third name and tried to save he got the message that disk was full. He then went to close the file and got the question do you want to save the changes and he clicked "no", because of getting the disk full message. File closed and he tried to re open it and it was GONE! Not in its folder or recycle bin. Did a restore back to a restore point earlier in the day and that didn't come back. Where that file went is a big mystery. It had been saved originally and after each of 2 names being added. So why did the whole file dissapppear?? And why is he getting the message that disk is full?
Also he has had a pop-up saying running low on memory . It has 4 gigs of ram and he only uses the PC to play freecell and some spreadsheet work. Wondering if this is a Windows 7 problem or if hard drive is faulty. Please if anyone can help, we would appreciate it.


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## Emtronics (Jan 20, 2000)

Strange indeed. Is this a new HP or Dell or Compaq? 4 gigs of RAM so maybe this is Win7 32 bit? The reason I ask is because on HPs, the hard drive is divided into 2 parts with that later being a place HP stores it's recovery info for a system restore not to be confused with Windows System Restore. I have seen people who have accidentally choose the "D" drive to save things on and this partition fills up quickly instead of saving on the main "C" drive. That could be the difference you are seeing with the 250gig HD and the 218HD Windows sees but Windows always sees less than what the actual HD has anyway. As for the pop up for "low memory". That has nothing to do with HD space left, That is in reference to the RAM in the system. If this is a 32 bit system, then only about 3gigs, maybe 3.5gigs of that RAM is all Windows will use and if you have a lot of stuff running in the background which is common with HPs etc etc, then indeed, the system may be slowing down. As for your missing file, if you know the name of it, did you do a whole drive search? If you know the file type like .doc for an office document, then you can search like this: *.doc The * is like a wild card and the search will produce every .doc file it can find.


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## preachp (Dec 2, 2009)

Hi 4dsmom,
To reduce the number of results in the search that Emtronics suggested use *.xls as that will only bring up the Excel docs. This is assuming you were using Excel of course. If not then the wildcard search will work with any flie extension, just find out what the default extension is for your particular spreadsheet.


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

Was he, by chance, using a flash drive?


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## SysCer (Jan 23, 2010)

All of the previous suggestions are reasonable trouble shooting steps, but for the last few weeks I've been getting the "Windows is running low on memory" dialog. Once the system reaches this state, I've seen save failures from office applications. They are file save error dialogs, but the real problem seems to the be the low memory.

The interesting thing is that I can't isolate the specific application. If I bring up taskmgr and look at the VM size for each process, there isn't a specific process that appears to be the culprit. In fact there appears to be some discrepencies between the taskmgr view of memory and the resource manager view.

The virus scanner (microsoft security essentials) hasn't found anything. I upgraded from Vista to Windows 7 (rather than a fresh install) but that doesn't seem to be your problem.

My only solution so far (and I haven't had much time to troubleshoot) is to reboot a couple of times a day.


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## TerryNet (Mar 23, 2005)

Just adding to *Emtronics*'s post ...

Hit the Windows logo key or click on the Start Orb and type "disk man" (without the quotes) and then Enter. You should get a Disk Management window as in my attachment. What partitions do you have (the part I have circled) on your hard drive?

If there is any chance that the file was going to the wrong partition you can search for it there also.


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## 4dsmom (Dec 5, 2000)

Thanks Emtronics, Terrynet, SysCer, Double Helix and Preachp. 
This is a Dell Vostro 220, 4.00GB memory 2.96 usable,,,,,32 bit Operating System.
I have tried all of your sugestions with no sucess. He was not using his flash drive, has the file backed up on a flash, but a little out of date. He can update that file, it is just so puzzling as to why that happened and where did file go? He has very little running in the background.Only things running is system, and live mail plus his MS Works spreadsheet.
When I searched for "diskman" it came up nothing found.
I thank you all for trying. I am so disgusted with this PC, wish we would have returned it , but our 30 days were up a week ago.
I am not an expert by any means with PC tech stuff, but I have worked a lot with Windows 95, 98 ME, 2000 and XP and have most always been able to work out any problems that arose, (with some help from helponthe net, of course). This OS is got me so frustrated I went out and bought a Dummies book and it hasn't solved any of my problems as yet.
I am going to try and call Dell support and see if I can get some answeras there.
Thanks again.
:down: to Dell and Windows 7


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

Was the file an e-mail attachment?


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## TerryNet (Mar 23, 2005)

> When I searched for "diskman" it came up nothing found.


There is a space between the k and m in disk man (which is short for disk management).


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## preachp (Dec 2, 2009)

Hi 4rdsmom,

I could be wrong but I don't think it is Win7 that is causing the problem, unless it is an incompatability with the partcular version of Works that you are using. Have you tried checking the MS update site for Works to see if there is a patch or update for Works on Win7?


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## 4dsmom (Dec 5, 2000)

Terrynet
Attached file of Disk man, 
Was on phone with Dell support, they could find nothing wrong, updated Bios and said if it happens again to call while problem is "active".

preachp
Looked for patch but didn't see anything. Using Version 6

Thanks again


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## zbar (Feb 23, 2009)

Hello, have a peek at the disk quota. right click c: drive, quota to check settings, also run a chkdsk from the run command interface. if all is ok, it might be that the OS did not install properly, you might need to backup your work onto some other media and reinstall the OS. On the reinstall, make sure to delete the partition, create new and soft reformat before install the OS. After the install make sure you have the latest bios, motherboard and device drivers updated from their respective manufactures. Include the HD.
I purchased a new seagate 1.5TB HD and had numerous read/write problems. Firmware update fixed the problem. Remember that many new devices come with outdated firmware...check all of these to make sure.
Good luck .


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## TerryNet (Mar 23, 2005)

The Disk Management page confirms that 218 GB is the amount allocated to you C partition. I can't explain the discrepancy between the 233 GB shown and the 250 expected capacity, but it's normal. Mine, for example, shows 149 GB for a 160 GB disk. Windows has not even assigned a drive letter to the Recovery partition, so not much danger that it was being used for the file save.

Microsoft Works started out as a piece of junk and seems to have become progressively problematic in XP, Vista and 7. I suspect that this problem has nothing to do with the OS or the drive, and everything to do with (doesn't) Works. For any serious work I advise anybody to use something else. Microsoft Office has the greatest number of features, but there are satisfactory alternatives for most people. OpenOffice is a free option, and there are "cloud computing" options from Google, Microsoft and (I think) others.


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## zbar (Feb 23, 2009)

The recovery partition is a hidden partition and should not be greater than the size of the predefined OS size written to those for reinstallation. 218 gig seems an erroneous size and have never heard of this until now as it cannot be written to nor does windows see it.


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## TerryNet (Mar 23, 2005)

Look again, *zbar*.  The Recovery partition is 14.65 GB.


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## zbar (Feb 23, 2009)

mmm!..


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

THe difference between the advertised disk capacity and what windows sees as the disk size is a math difference. Disk manufacturers use a base 10 number, in otherwords 1 kb = 1000 where as the real number as the computer sees it is 1kb = 1024 work that out to the gigbyte and a 250Gb drive is actually approximately 232 Gb.


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## 4dsmom (Dec 5, 2000)

ok, thanks again to all. I think it would be safest to change to Open Office , I also Have Office 2007 but it is so much different than what he is using. Hard to teach an "old dog" new tricks. lol Think I will mark solved unless something pops up later.


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