An NTFS volume might sometimes misreport free disk space. This primarily occurs since NTFS supports several file-level and volume features. To solve such problems, you might need to reformat the volume and use backup to restore lost files and folders. One should use file recovery utility in case if backup fails to restore.

To illustrate this, consider that you use an NTFS volume on Windows Server 2003 based computer system. You suddenly observe that the NTFS volume is quite full, while actually lot of free disk space is available. You cannot locate the files and folders causing the issue.

Cause

An NTFS volume might exhibit the discussed behavior in one of the following situations:

Volume cluster size is quite large to accommodate medium-sized files Files or folders stored on the volume contain reserved or invalid file names MFT is grown up Alternate data streams in files and folders NTFS permissions or file attributes preventing files and folders to be accessed or displayed NTFS volume is logically corrupted

Solution

You should apply these methods to solve the given problem:

Run read-only chkdsk command to determine the cluster size and the disk space being used. Also, determine the wasted disk space by finding the difference between SIZE and SIZE ON DISK parameters' values of all files and folders present on the volume(that can be calculated by selecting all files and folders of volume in My Computer and viewing the General tab in Properties section), provided you are not using NTFS compression. Larger the amount of difference indicates that present cluster size is larger than required. Reformat the volume with /a switch to reduce cluster size. Remove the files with reserved or invalid file names Run built-in disk defragmenter utility to analyze the volume number and size of MFT fragments. Use a third-party defragmenter tool to consolidate MFT FRS records that are unused Enable 'Show Hidden Files and Folders' option and clear 'Hide protected operating system files' check box to include protected and hidden files Run chkdsk /f command to try repairing the corrupted volume. If it fails, reformat the volume

If you find any issues restoring files or folders from backup after reformatting the volume, use a file recovery software to recover them. File Recovery applications are powerful utilities designed with high-end techniques that prove safe to recover all types of lost files and folders.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a powerful and completely reliable application to salvage lost and files from Windows based systems. It supports FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file systems. It is a graphically rich ntfs recovery software that provides advanced options, like File Filter, RAW File Recovery, Append Header and more.