Reclaiming "hidden" capacity on outboard USB hard drive

[Peter N. Spotts]

On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 12:19:18 -0400
"Mark Warner" <markwarner1954 at att.net> wrote:

> Peter N. Spotts wrote:
> > Folks,
> >
> > Over the past month and a half or so, I've gotten helpful advice on
> > ensuring that my Ubuntu installation (now 6.06) reads from and
> > writes to my outboard USB drive (Maxtor 300gb). I'm looking to
> > close the book on the troubles I had by reclaiming what appears to
> > be "missing" capacity.
> >
> > To briefly recap: I had been using the drive as a backup. During the
> > switch from another distro to Ubuntu, I lost the ability to read to
> > and write to the drive, so I was advised to treat it like a new
> > drive, formatting it in ext3, setting up new partitions, etc.
> > Ultimately, that got me back in business. However...
> >
> > 1. Fdisk -l shows 300 gb of gross capacity.
> > 2. Gkrellm shows 295 gb total and 274 free (meaning at least 21 gb
> > used, depending on whether you like Fdisk or Gkrellm statistics).
> > 3. duh -h shows that the files it can detect on the drive are using
> > only 6 gb of space.
> >
> > So it appears that I've got gobs of gigs missing. Is it possible to
> > reclaim them? Or are they destined to spin furiously forever like
> > some forlorn tourists on a renegade ride at Diskneyland?
> 
> Which is closer to what you're expecting, 6G used or 21/26G used?
> 
> What does gparted say?
> 
> As for the 300/295G reporting discrepancy, don't worry about it. Very
> common, especially with large drives. It's just the way it is.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

Hi Mike,

Gparted shows 279 gb with 10 used. After using du -h, I expected to
have perhaps 293 or 294 gb left. I suspect that the 21+/- has files in
it; it's about what I has before I had my initial troubles with getting
Ubuntu to read the disk. As gparted sees it, I've got a drive that's
only 279 gb in size, of which it sees 10 gb as taken. So somewhere, I
would expect some 21 gb more in total space, of which the 21 might be
filled with files...

Pete

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