Vista defragment losing hard drive sapce

I just got a new computer with a 750 gb hard drive, but actually says 683gb.
I loaded a few programs and games on it which took about 50gb so now im down
to 653gb or so right? well after loading on that much info i decided it would
be good to do a disk defrag so 12 hours later and with it still running i
thought this couldn't be right so i cancelled it. I then went to look at my
hard drive specs and saw that i was down to 591gb! I then thought ill just
try another disk defrag in the morning so i did and 2 hours later it finished
this time, again stealing hard drive space. i was now down to 582gb. I dont
understand what is going on and have only been able to find one other
discussion on the internet with similar problems. Has anyone heard about this
happening?

"Henry" <> wrote in message
news:9A5DDB16-A759-4D39-8513-...
>I just got a new computer with a 750 gb hard drive, but actually says
>683gb.

Perfectly normal so far.

> I loaded a few programs and games on it which took about 50gb so now im
> down
> to 653gb or so right?

Um, no. 683 - 50 = 633, not 653. But whatever.

>well after loading on that much info i decided it would
> be good to do a disk defrag so 12 hours later and with it still running i
> thought this couldn't be right so i cancelled it.

Forget defragging. NTFS doesn't need it, and Vista will keep things
ordered automatically anyways.

If I was you I would reformat and start over.

hmm..still that doesn't really answer what the problem could be. A drop in
hard drive space like that is not normal, could I have a faulty hard drive?
The drive also won't shut up. It's constantly making those grinding
processing noises or whatever you wanna call it.

"Bob Campbell" wrote:

> "Henry" <> wrote in message
> news:9A5DDB16-A759-4D39-8513-...
> >I just got a new computer with a 750 gb hard drive, but actually says
> >683gb.
>
> Perfectly normal so far.
>
> > I loaded a few programs and games on it which took about 50gb so now im
> > down
> > to 653gb or so right?
>
> Um, no. 683 - 50 = 633, not 653. But whatever.
>
> >well after loading on that much info i decided it would
> > be good to do a disk defrag so 12 hours later and with it still running i
> > thought this couldn't be right so i cancelled it.
>
> Forget defragging. NTFS doesn't need it, and Vista will keep things
> ordered automatically anyways.
>
> If I was you I would reformat and start over.
>
>

"Henry" <> wrote in message
news:881A17B2-D935-46AA-B47C-...
> hmm..still that doesn't really answer what the problem could be. A drop in
> hard drive space like that is not normal, could I have a faulty hard
> drive?
> The drive also won't shut up. It's constantly making those grinding
> processing noises or whatever you wanna call it.

You mean it is looking at files and producing an index?

HTH
-pk

>
> "Bob Campbell" wrote:
>
>> "Henry" <> wrote in message
>> news:9A5DDB16-A759-4D39-8513-...
>> >I just got a new computer with a 750 gb hard drive, but actually says
>> >683gb.
>>
>> Perfectly normal so far.
>>
>> > I loaded a few programs and games on it which took about 50gb so now im
>> > down
>> > to 653gb or so right?
>>
>> Um, no. 683 - 50 = 633, not 653. But whatever.
>>
>> >well after loading on that much info i decided it would
>> > be good to do a disk defrag so 12 hours later and with it still running
>> > i
>> > thought this couldn't be right so i cancelled it.
>>
>> Forget defragging. NTFS doesn't need it, and Vista will keep things
>> ordered automatically anyways.
>>
>> If I was you I would reformat and start over.
>>
>>

>> Forget defragging. NTFS doesn't need it, and Vista will keep things
ordered automatically anyways.

Bob:

Per the defrag command:
Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT fragments = 13,206

Do you see anything undesirable about that last line?

It now reads "= 2" thanks to PerfectDisk 2008.