Disk Full... WTF?

[Keebler Elf]

I have a SATA drive on an adaptor card that shows as having 20 GB still available. Yet when I try to save to it the drive cancels the save and gives me a message that the disk is full.

What's going on?

 

[shrek71]

How much crap is in the recycle bin on that drive?

 

[Keebler Elf]

Empty

 

[vavog]

Did you run chkdsk?

 

[Berlin]

Disk Full... WTF?

Is your pc on 24/7 ?

 

[Keebler Elf]

Is your pc on 24/7 ?

Yes. Though I reboot at least once a week.

Even when I reboot the problem persists though.

 

[Keebler Elf]

See my other post... I think there may be other issues:

https://terb.cc/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=195391&page=2

 

[Keebler Elf]

Questions:

I have the latest patches and drivers for the mobo and SATA adaptor.

It's a 500 GB drive with two partitions: one with 20 GB and the rest on the other. There's no OS on either (the OS is on another IDE drive connected directly to the mobo).

The drive has been fully functional for the past year. The problems only started recently.

chkdsk shows no bad sectors. This drive is a storage drive only (no programs) and uses NTFS.

 

[Keebler Elf]

Ahhh, I may be on to something...

When chkdsk showed no bad sectors I decided to defragment the disk. The analysis shows only 7% free space, total fragmentation of 41%, and file fragmentation of 83%.

That fragmentation seems pretty high so maybe that's part of the problem?

So I went to defrag and it says I need 15% free space. So I'm going to have to do some cleaning up first...

 

[terpene]

You might see what's up using Sequoia View - I had a similar problem some years ago, and this spotted where the space hogs were:

http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/visualization/sequoiaview//

- an interesting and useful program anyway

 

[LadiesMan69]

I though system functions like system restore and the recycle bin actually reserved disk space - therefore it doesn't show up as "free space" on the drive.

Yes that is true from my experience. However, recycle Bin does not reserve disk space. When you delete a file, it does not leave your drive, it gets moved to the recycle directory and stays there until you clean the recycle or you run low on disk space and the system needs to delete it to create free space.

How much crap is in the recycle bin on that drive?

free Space (in this case, 20 GB) is always going to be free space on Disk after the files in the recycle bin are taken into account. If you clear the recycle bin, you will have more than the 20 Gb never less.

When chkdsk showed no bad sectors I decided to defragment the disk. The analysis shows only 7% free space, total fragmentation of 41%, and file fragmentation of 83%.

That fragmentation seems pretty high so maybe that's part of the problem?

So I went to defrag and it says I need 15% free space. So I'm going to have to do some cleaning up first...

• 20 GB out of 500 GB is 4% disk space, I wonder where the other 3% is coming from.
  Disk fragmentation will have nothing to do with you not being able to copy a file onto the 20 GB Free space. Its good to do the disk defrag but should make no difference to your file saving problem.
• I was going to suggest you move some files off the drive, then put them back on. If the problem is just disk space, you should be able to copy the files back. If it is some sort of security setting, you would not be able to. Be interested to know which one of the two it is.
• Also try using a System Diagnostic program like PC Wizard 2008 and have it scan the hard disk for physical errors

 

[Keebler Elf]

I can move files back and forth to the drive so long as it's being detected. When it's down, obviously I can't.

I'm constantly emptying the recycle bin.

The rest of my computer works normally.

 

[Keebler Elf]

I do notice with PC Wizard that it's detecting 2 SCSI controllers.

One is a Promise FastTrak TX2300 Controller (which is new) and the other is Promise RAID Console SCSI Processor Device.

Are these the same thing?

I had an old adaptor one-port card that I replaced with the FastTrak 2300. I don't remember what the old adaptor card was.

 

[LadiesMan69]

I can move files back and forth to the drive so long as it's being detected. When it's down, obviously I can't.
I'm constantly emptying the recycle bin.
The rest of my computer works normally.

So does this mean you no longer get the Disk Full Error message and your only problem is a wonky drive ... which is the other thread you have?
When your drive is running, are you hearing any clicking noises? Is there any new noise when the drive goes down?
If there are noises then it is the drive that is bad, if no noise then I would lead towards problem with the controller.

 

[Keebler Elf]

No noises.

I bought a new SATA cable today and so far no problems. Maybe that was it...

 

[LadiesMan69]

OK, we will let the thread rest till we hear back from you. I found another utility called THE ULTIMATE TROUBLESHOOTER you can try if problem comes back. I know nothing about the utility itself (perhaps another TERB techy might) but I trust the recomendations of the site. It has been a good resource for me since the birth of windows 95.

 

[Keebler Elf]

The problem persisted as soon as I tried to save to the drive.

I think it's too full so I've been cleaning stuff off and defragging. There's now plenty of space on the drive and no more failures.