Comments on: <Unknown> again …

By: Ethan Campbell

Ethan Campbell — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:54:06 +0000

One more thing: When I look at System Restore, the only option I see is to reduce the percentage of space allocated to Restore points — nothing about specific points, or how many points to allow. I did reduce the allocated space incrementally several times, to no effect.

Thanks,

Ethan

By: Ethan Campbell

Ethan Campbell — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:51:46 +0000

Hello Oliver –

I have been sifting through your excellent comments on the space problem. I have a ThinkPad T60 that’s about 3 years old, and usable space has been steadily eroding. Yesterday I all of a sudden lost another 6 gigabytes or so, which alarms me. WinDirStat doesn’t know what’s in the Unknown area.

I downloaded and ran CMDasSys.exe, ran chkdsk under it. It doesn’t come up with any Unknown space, and says I have the same amount of free space as is shown in Properties for my C drive.

I uninstalled all the ThinkVantage stuff when I got this laptop, since I was using it for multi-track audio and didn’t want anything clogging up the works. I wonder if that has caused more of a problem than is usual for these situations.

Any light you can shed would be greatly appreciated.

Ethan Campbell

By: mthapar

mthapar — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:51:37 +0000

WDS and the info on this page rocks !!!

I just now recovered approx. 14 GB of ‘Unknown’ space in my laptop because of valuable info on this page.

Many Thanks.

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:46:25 +0000

Thank you for posting.

I have a Sony Vaio running Vista with 52 of 100gb showing as unknown in WDS.

After disabling the System Restore Points all of the unknown space came back.

By: patrick

patrick — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:32:11 +0000

Hi there, well I got your program to work and I think I’m going to be able to get myself sorted. Thanks!!!

By: patrick

patrick — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:14:37 +0000

I’m having exact same problem as the others, i.e. 50+ GB of unknown data I cannot reclaim. I tried the “chkdsk /f c:” but the process completes without error and without reclaiming my space. I then tried downloading and extracting your LocalSystem file but when I try running cmdassys.exe I never get a command window. I tried the other programs ans with RUNasSYS.exe I see a cmd window for the blink of an eye. Fyi, I booted in safe mode, logged in as Administrator and tried to run it, no help. Any advice on why I cannot get cmdassys to run? Thanks!!! Btw, I have WinXP sp2 build 2600.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:21:17 +0000

maybe there is a way to analize the unknown so it is known.

There might. The biggest “problem” in that sense is that WDS is multi-threaded. Under some circumstances fetching the backup privilege will already do the job and let me look into “System Volume Information” etc.

However, the privilege needs to be enabled for all threads and the user has to own the privilege in the first place. So basically WDS would then behave differently depending on the “context”.

By: C Barfield

C Barfield — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:40:36 +0000

it could be better to just provide a list of things it could possibly be (just so ppl dont panic) and suggestions how the user could fix it. maybe there is a way to analize the unknown so it is known. i didnt know my pc allocated so much (and used it all), obviously others didnt either.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:28:06 +0000

I think in general we can state that this is the single feature that has caused the most grief so far.

It’s likely that it will be default-off in the next version.

By: C Barfield

C Barfield — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:23:52 +0000

more advice would be to check to see if your unknown space matches with the disk space set aside for that disk in the windows system restore settings, found in: control panel/system/system restore/ select disk, “setings”.

if the size set aside is too large make it smaller (12% is default!)
i would advise to leave system restore on because it has saved me alot, even from a virus attack.
Charlie.