Why does my drive show as 180GB used, but copies only 40GB?

Question

My computer crashed, so I removed the drive (with Windows XP Professional 32-Bit) and put this drive in another computer running Windows 7 64-bit.

Booting with Windows 7, when going to My Computer it is showing the XP drive as more than 180GB used. So as a quick backup, I'm trying to copy all the disk's content to a folder, but when I start copying, it's showing only 40 GB as the total size of the files to copy.

I enabled showing system and hidden files in View options. What could be the problem?

Answer 1

Sometimes Windows missreports the total space, but my best guess is a faulty hdd. Also, you could try to check the disk for errors and see if it returns anything. And provide us with more details.

Answer 2

This may be due to a faulty disk.

Use CHKDSK to check your faulty HDD and then, check the total size and copy the files.

Note: CHKDSK will remove and correct improper file system errors. During the process, you may lose your important files that reside in bad sectors.

Answer 3

Windows stores a lot of system internal and backup files marked as system and hidden and additionally not accessible with your user profile. Take for example the whole SystemVolumeInformation folder in the root directory. It usually contains gigabyte of data.

Those files are by visible and accessible - hence not copyable in the Windows Explorer.