I have a IBM laptop with a 56 GB hard drive. If I look at the C drive in My Computer I see 14 GB free, 41.5 GB used.

If I open C and select all, right click then choose Properties it says 18.7 GB used. Where the heck is the other 30 GB going?

I've run defrag, scandisk and file management tools trying to ID the culprit. No luck.

Turned off System restore, removed the page file, and made sure the drive isnt compressed.

Whatelse can I try so I can ID the space hog?

Tools, Folder Options, and on the View tab you can turn on viewing "hidden files".

Should have mentioned that, all thats turned off or viewable.

Maybe try something like the free version of TreeSize:

http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

It scans the drive and lists the entire drive's directory structure, showing the size of everything.

Not sure if that will help here, but in general it's a great tool for figuring out what the hell is sucking disk space.

I assume you're logged on with a profile that has permissions to everything on your system? No pesky kids removing Admin rights from folders to try to hide their porn?

I have. Its actually a work machine, have full rights to it.

I've used Tree Size, shows me about 2 GB in usage, just like Windows. But if I look at the drive through defrag, its nearly full.

Weird.

Had a similar issue on a Sony laptop I own. From the factory, Sony installed some kind of "backup" partition on the drive which saved the setup files for the OS and all of the applications. The partition was not visible anywhere in Windows XP, nor could I see the partitioned files, I just knew my 80 gig drive was missing 15 gigs of storage space. Their theory was, in the event the PC crashed n' burned I could use the "backup partition" to bring the laptop back to factory specs.

Long story short I had to FDISK the drive using an extra Sony utility to reclaim the drive space, then I wiped out the "backup partition" and gained all 15 gigs

IBM might have the same thing on your laptop, check out the original setup discs that came with your laptop (if you still have them) to see if they provide any clues.

Just something else to check... one of my coworkers here had their PC just totally filling up the hard drive. Nothing was showing up except when we clicked on the properties for C drive and it displayed a nearly full Drive.

Turns out it was the IE Temp Internet files folder. It was saving EVERY THING from the internet. For some reason it was not being limited by the settings. So we emptied out the folder and reset the settings and it is golden now.

Hmmm, it does have the IBM utility load on the disk. You access it though the Blue Button. I bet thats it!

I'll check the internet files too!

Thanks guys.

Check your virtual memory settings. I don't think it shows as used space.

Another thing to check - be it a long shot given it's a laptop PC:

Check the System Volume Information folder.
By default, only "System" has privileges to that folder, so space occupied by stuff in that folder won't show up in any disk space counts (including TreeSize)

I once had this same problem with a server, and found that some huge files were left in there by Back Up Exec when BUE was angry.
To fix it, I gave Administrator permissions to the folder, then I could delete the crap.

EDIT - Don't ramdomly delete stuff from that folder with out researching first - just remembered that I purged it by stopping/starting a specific service, not deleting files - let me know if you need more info - kinda a long shot.

Are you sure you don't have another disk partition?

I believe thinkpads come with a hidden partition that contains system recovery tools, but I doubt the size would anything close to 17 gig.

In his first post he says "If I look at the C drive in My Computer I see 14 GB free, 41.5 GB used."
That would imply the stats he quotes are from one 54.5 gig partition. A quick look at Disk Manager should show if there's any factory restore partitions or crap like that though.

I'm upping the odds on the System Volume Information folder from "long shot" to "distinct possibility".
On my home PC, it shows as 0 until I add in permissions for the logged in user - then it shows 15 gig (old restore points, etc).

Thanks for the ideas guys. I'll have to steal the machine from the user again this week.

Re-load.