Image Sizes. Are they really accurate?

Hi,

I just purchased the software less than a week ago, and have successfully restored an image without any problems.

I have two questions.

Question#1

I was creating a 3rd image, but before I could do that I needed to make some space for it on the external 80GB Western Digital Hard Drive (actually its true capacity = 74.5GB (firewire connected) that I was saving the images to. In this same drive I had two other images created by TI8, and other backup files. The drive reported only having 1.2 GB of free space. So, I deleted the 2nd image (approx 10GB in size). But to my surprise, even though the file was gone, the extra space didn't materialize. It still reported the 1.2 GB of free space as before. I did a "check disk" operation to see if there were any disk errors. The disk was fine. I went to the Windows defrag utility and it reports a big section of fragmented space (red section) with hardly any free space which obviously reflected the 1.2 GB of free space. I deleted the recycle bin, but that didn't help. I deleted some other folders that amounted to about 9 GB of space just to see if I could delete anything that would create some free space, and it did. So what happened? Why didn't I gain 10Gb of free space when I deleted the 10GB image file. I also need to mention that the drive only contains a single image file (33.6 GB) and another folder filled with backups (19.5GB), but yet the drive only reports having 10.5 GB of free space. I should have approx 22 GB of free space. What happened to the other 10.5 GB of free space I should have? It seems that the 10GB image file that I deleted seems to still be there. Just to let you know I did account for a 3.43 GB Hidden folder in the above calculations.


Question #2
Luckily, I had another external 160GB Western Digital Hard drive (firewire connected). I created a 9.44GB image with TI8 (normal compression). I have that image and another folder that is 31.GB (filled with JPEGs, Video Files captured from my mini-dv Sony camcorder, etc) Both should only take up roughly 41 GB of space of my 160GB Hard Drive (actually Windows reports the Hard Drive Capacity of 149 GB which is the true capacity). There are no hidden files in this drive. Anyway, I should have approx 107 GB of free space, but it only reports 40.3 GB of free space. What's going on? I'm sure this problem is related to whats going on on my other external 80GB Drive as indicated in question #1.

In advance, I thank you for reviewing and replying.

Christian

 

I'm not sure if this helps, but my desktop is running Windows XP. Just wanted you to know that.

 

When you delete an Acronis Image and it goes to the recycle bin and you delete it from there it still stays on your hard disk as a hidden file in the recycle bin in one of the files usually starting with S followed by a lot of numbers. Windows can't delete it because a program is running in the background that appears to be still using the Acronis Image File. If the image file is too big for the recycle bin my experience is that it does get deleted and you gain that amount of free space. When you reboot the computer however the image in the hidden file in the recycle bin is gone and you should get back the free space that the image took up.

 

Yeah, I thought about that. I did reboot, but the available space that I should have gained never materialized.

 

Hello CMarquez,

Thank you for choosing Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

We are really sorry for the inconveniences.

The situation is really strange. Could you please create Acronis Report with the external drive plugged and send to support@acronis.com along with the link o this thread (please see https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=55317)? This will help us to solve the problem.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

I solved the problem. I have Norton System Works. Norton has their own Recycle Protected Bin. If I recall correctly, I needed to right click on the Trash Bin and choose both empty recycle bin and empty Norton Protected files bin.