Topic: Help with deleting 1GB of missing data...

[baustin]

Hello all!

This is kinda related to computer recording.

First of all, I'm running Win98SE on a PIII box. I have a main hard drive and a secondary 40GB hard drive that I use for file sharing etc. Today, I was transferring data from a few misburned DVD Videos to my secondary hard drive for correct burning. The first discs went fine, but when I walked in to check the progress of the third, it had gone from about 15 minutes remaining to over 400 minutes.

I hit cancel, transfer showed having stopped, I waited, but the DVD drive continued to work. After waiting, I finally hit ctrl-alt-del to see if I could stop the process, but there was not one to stop. So, I ejected the disc. Everything seems fine. I go to delete the files already transferred and get to one file (lets call it vts_01) showing that it is in use or protected with an access denied message. I finally get it into the recycle bin and it tells me again that access is denied. Anyway, I thought I finally got it deleted.

I go to shutdown and get a message to the effect of "file transfer in progress" or something along that line. Again, I ctrl-alt-del, to end the process to no avail. Anyway, I finally get a blue screen, computer shuts down, I thought scandisk on start up would find the large chunk of data and give me the option to delete and it didn't. I ran a thorough error check with no results (not that I recognized at least).

So, right now, the recycle bin shows it is empty (nothing to delete), but when I click on recycle bin properties, it shows it contains 1 folder and 3 files totaling right at 1GB. My free hard drive space is also about 1GB short of what I initially started with.

My question, is how do I find this missing data and delete it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanx,
-Bryan

[MattD]

Have you tried booting in safe mode and emptying the apparently empty recycle bin?

If that doesn't work, then I'd suggest booting to DOS (need a boot disk for this one) and finding the file on your drive. It won't be too bad if you poke around enough and sort by filesize.

[baustin]

Thanx Matt!

I'd +T you if I could. You some how or another helped me. I rebooted in Safe Mode and, again, the recycle bin showed empty with properties showing 3 files, 1 folder totaling 1GB. No progress. Then, for some reason, I decided to create another folder named "wsp" in the same directory as before. Deleted it into the recycle bin, emptied the recycle bin, and, boom, got my 1GB back. WTF! Crazy Windows!

Anyway, thanx again!

-Bryan