1T Drive - Missing 680+GB

Hi! I have a 1T Passport.

When I go to the properties, it shows the following:

710 GB Used

221 GB Available

931 GB Total

I have 6 folders of data on the drive:

Folder 1 - 5.7 GB

Folder 2 - 9.52 GB

Folder 3 - 6.36 GB

Folder 4 - 4.69 GB

Folder 5 - 0 GB

Folder 6 - 1.11 GB

Total - 27.38 GB

So, it looks like I am missing 682.62 GB somewhere.

I have only had the drive for about a year, copied some files onto it and then it sat in a drawer, so it’s not like

it got a ton of use.

I tried showing hidden folders and there were only 3 for less than 1 MB

I went to manage hard drives and it shows 

931.48 GB NTFS

Healthy (Primary Partition)

Any ideas where I can find the missing space?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WD My Passport 0741
Unit Serial Number:  
Firmware Number: 1022
Capacity: 1000.17 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 13:57:48, March 04, 2015

Do you have files in a Windows recycle bin associated with that drive?

I checked the Recycle Bin and unfortunately it’s empty.

Thanks!!

If it were me, I’d be tempted to move the data off somewhere safe and then just reformat the drive, then put the data back onto it.

There are software that you can install on your PC which will show drive usage broken down by files/folders which you may also want to try. It will probably be something system-related like a swap file or the recycle bin file that I mentioned before, which has been dumped/created on the drive by mistake and is now orphaned but taking up space. They can always be a “fun” challenge to track down, a drive analyser program can help there quite a bit.

It sounds like the drive may have got corrupted.

Joe

Thank you! Do you have any drive analyzers you would recommend?

Personally I haven’t needed one for a while, so I’m not sure any recommendation would be up to date. But from a quick Google search there are a few options:

http://www.howtogeek.com/113012/10-best-free-tools-to-analyze-hard-drive-space-on-your-windows-pc/

http://lifehacker.com/5835082/five-best-hard-drive-space-analyzers

Have a look at those two articles, and maybe try one or two that they both recommend such as SpaceSniffer and see how you go.