lost disk space - interrupted download

Hi, So I was downloading a file that was ~ 5 GB , but the host disconnected half way through so the dl was incomplete. Now, however, I am still missing the 5gb of space and the file is not there. I've tried diskeeper, restarting, playing with system restore etc but cant seem to get the space back. Please help, thnx!

 

The program created a temporary file somewhere, and depending on the program you can start the download again. What program were you using?

 

DC++, its on the local school network, anyway to delete that temp file?

 

I don't think I've ever used that program so i wouldn't know how to delete the temp file. But maybe you could use Disk cleanup and see if it works.

 

ok, but will the temp file eventually be deleted if the dl is not resumed?

 

I don't think so. But try this, look in the place where the download would end up and see if you find a file there.

 

You can search by file size and or creation date to find it or use something like CrapCleaner to automatically find and delete it, if you can't handle basic Windows Explorer stuff.

 

problem solved with windirstat.
Found an incomplete folder which I couldnt see even with view hidden folders turned on ?/ but anyways managed to clear about 30 gb

 

I thought it was a 5GB file?

 

This really depends a lot on how the application doing the download actually terminated. If it just died, then you may not be able to find this 5gb temp file anywhere. The app may have been given 5gb of free disk space by the operating system, but the app may have never completed the steps necessary to create a real file entry in the OS file system. This used to be a more common issue under Win98 and these were called "unallocated clusters". To be perfectly honest I am not up to date on the actual mechanics of this under Vista's NTFS file system, but I am pretty sure it can happen there as well.

But not to worry, even if what I am suggesting has transpired and you are not able to find this 5gb temp file anywhere all you need to do is run chkdsk. You will want to specify the /F parameter. Please note that Vista will not allow you to directly run chkdsk on the C: drive. It will complain, however it will ask if you would like to run this at the next boot. Just tell it yes and reboot the machine. You will see its progress as it runs. If it finds unallocated clusters, it will turn them into a file and place it in the root of the C: drive. If it finds more than one group of these, it will create a separate file for each. It will name the first such file FILE0000.CHK and increment the number for each subsequent file. After Vista reboots, look in the root of C and see if there are such files there. You can just delete them. (In the past, when I had an app die while creating a file, I was occasionally able to recover some data from these CHK files. That is why chkdsk creates the files, rather than just returning the space to the free disk space pool. It gives you a chance to SEE if there is any recoverable data there.

Hope this helps!

Gary

P.S. Well I see in the time it took for me to write my long winded reply you solved it yourself.