Hard Drive got smaller???

[SeanBogert]

I have a 120 gb Maxtor hd. Everything was fine.. had 40 gb or so left... I left the computer on all night (like I usually do) and in the morning I had 0 gb left. I know it didn't happen by itself, so I rememebred installing a program which would let me boot linux or windows and that messed with the filesystem somehow. I got rid of the program, but the problem remains. This was a while ago so id on't remember the program. Anyway I can use partition magic or some other program to fix it? Windows says I have 120 gb drive but all the free space is gone.

[Outlaw]

Try running scandisk, it should be able to fix it.

[Antti2004]

I am curious, you wrote that you loaded a program that would let you boot LINUX. If you are using or want to use LINUX (GOOD) you need to have Windows installed first and have you hard driver partitioned at least in two partitions. When you install LINUX you should choose to take over the empty partition and it should be FAT32.
Do not install LINUX on the same partition as Windows, that will be dangerous for the Windows.
You should have LINUX boot menu popping up when you start your PC and option for starting WIndows OS.
N.B. When installing LINUX to the second partition the Windows will NOT SEE the LINUX partition at all, but when bootin LINUX you can see the Windows. This might be the reason that you 'lost' your hard driver space.
LINUX will need about 3Giga of space.

Hope this doesn't put you of from LINUX.

:)

[RAcastClarke]

That's exactly right, Anti, as I have Linux. I've noticed sometimes that after installing abunch of stuff, my HD still says it has about 3 gigs of space left, when it really has around 700 megs. I fixed this by defragging the hard drive and letting it run all the way through without stopping. Try this and see if it works. You never know.

[armystud0911]

I ran into that problem once, my hard drive went from 27 free gigs, next day it had 16, then I ran a restore op, 7 gigs one more just for the heck- 0gigs. I had to reformat.