The hard drive says its full, but it isnt..

[tayg10]

Whats with this? it only has 28.5gb in it, but it says all 297 are used!? ive defraged and stuff, i guess thats not the problem.

[benniemc]

Hidden files.

Go here and it will show you how to reveal them.

I reckon it's a HP recovery data set.

ITsVISTA Tip 11: Reveal the Files Vista Tries to Keep Hidden | ITsVISTA

You don't have backup software like Norton 360 do you? Something like that could be keeping a mirror of your C drive on your E drive, and it will be hidden away so you can't accidentally get at it.

[tayg10]

i have an HP backup going. but would it really take up ALL that space? can i delete the file and still have the backup work if i need it??
EDIT: i set it to allow me to view hidden files, but there is only a tmp folder, and its empty.

[benniemc]

There is another option to view System files, the folders your looking for will be marked like that.

And yeah, incremental backups can use that much space without a doubt, They just keep adding and adding until the disk is full, and then prune off the oldest backups for the newest.

Disable it, or limit it to how much space it can use for backups.

The other option is to format the disk, repartition it into 2 parts, and use 1/2 for data and 1/2 for backups only. That's what I'd do.