Q: My hard disk seems to be getting smaller! There is a megabyte less free space than there was a month ago, yet I have not saved anywhere near 1MB’s worth of files. What’s going on?

A: This is quite a common problem, but most sufferers don’t realise they’ve got it. What happens is that some of the free space gets allocated to a non-existent file.

In other words the disk filing system has, in your case, a megabyte allocated to one or more files that don’t have a directory entry. They cannot therefore be seen with the DIR command, nor deleted.

Fortunately it is possible to turn these lost chains, as they are called, back into real files which can then be seen and deleted in the normal way. Simply type this command:

CHKDSK /F

If you have any lost chains, Chkdsk will tell you so and ask you if you want to convert them into files. Answer ‘Y’.

FILE0000.CHK, FILE0001.CHK, FILE0002.CHK…

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HackingForChrist/~3/ZeJ8Qps8pLI/