Hi all - and thanks to the devs for a fantastic piece of software.
I have a problem that seems to be related to FFS.
I've been using FFS to back up my data partitions. Yesterday I ran SpaceSniffer on my D drive (data, separate from my C OS drive) and it reported that there was 8GB of 'unaccessible space'. Nothing I could do would get rid of it, or allow me to see what it contained so in desperation I backed up the drive with FFS, reformatted it, and then used FFS to synch the contents back. After an hour or so the operation reported 'disk full' so I checked it with SpaceSniffer and there was now 60GB of 'unaccessible space'. This was doing a clean restore to a newly formatted drive - and the backup had nothing untoward.
So it *seems* that FFS is rendering disk space inaccessible/unusable. Is this possible? I'm currently restoring my files to a re-reformatted drive by hand, it all seems to be going well.
Thanks
'Unaccessible space'?
- Posts: 6
- Joined: 10 Mar 2021
- Posts: 6
- Joined: 10 Mar 2021
...so I restored my D drive manually, by copying the files in Explorer. Everything was fine, the D drive and the backup matched. And then I ran FFS, knowing the two drives were identical apart from my Outlook files, and now I have 8.7GB inaccessible space on my D drive again. What gives???
-
- Posts: 3620
- Joined: 11 Jun 2019
FFS isn't causing that, almost guaranteed. How are you reformatting it? Best method is to use diskpart via a command prompt, but that can be a little difficult for novices. A tool like MiniTool Partition Wizard is much friendlier and has a GUI, but it does need to be installed first.
- Posts: 292
- Joined: 13 Apr 2017
Take a look at others with the same issue:
https://www.google.com/search?q=SpaceSniffer+unaccessible+space
https://www.google.com/search?q=SpaceSniffer+unaccessible+space
- Posts: 6
- Joined: 10 Mar 2021
Hi - yes, I'm aware that others have had the same issue and that nobody has found a solution.
I formatted the drive in Explorer (right-click > Format > Quick Format) and it was completely empty (as it should have been). I also checked the partition with Paragon HD Manager and all was good.
I used the same method twice.
- The first time I used FFS to synch my backup with the new drive and ended up with 60GB inaccessible space.
- The second time I manually copied everything from the backup to the new drive using Explorer. No inaccessible space. I then ran Compare in FFS and, apart from my Outlook .pst files, there was no difference - as expected. But then I ran Synchronize in FFS - which should have only updated the backed up psts and not made any changes to the D drive - and suddenly I have 8GB inaccessible space.
So it *is* FFS that is creating this inaccessible space.
I formatted the drive in Explorer (right-click > Format > Quick Format) and it was completely empty (as it should have been). I also checked the partition with Paragon HD Manager and all was good.
I used the same method twice.
- The first time I used FFS to synch my backup with the new drive and ended up with 60GB inaccessible space.
- The second time I manually copied everything from the backup to the new drive using Explorer. No inaccessible space. I then ran Compare in FFS and, apart from my Outlook .pst files, there was no difference - as expected. But then I ran Synchronize in FFS - which should have only updated the backed up psts and not made any changes to the D drive - and suddenly I have 8GB inaccessible space.
So it *is* FFS that is creating this inaccessible space.
- Posts: 6
- Joined: 10 Mar 2021
OK so I did a test. I used Paragon to create a new empty 20GB partition and format it as NTFS with drive letter T.
I copied 8GB of random stuff to it and used FFS to synch it with a new folder on my backup drive. That worked fine.
Then I copied another 8GB of stuff to the new backup folder and ran Compare in FFS. As expected, it said that there was 8GB of stuff to copy to my new partition from the backup.
Then I opened SpaceSniffer and looked at my T drive - all was fine.
Then, with SpaceSniffer still running, I ran Sync in FFS and watched as an area of inaccessible space was created on T - and increased as I watched and as the sync ran. Eventually the sync stopped because it had run out of space.
After some further tests I discovered that the inaccessible space is the same size as the files I'm copying from the backup. It increases during the sync and doesn't get deleted at the end.
One other thing I'm going to try. My backups are on a compressed drive, I'll remove the compression and try again - that *may* have something to do with it - in which case FFS is not good at handling compressed drives. We'll see - I'll report back later.
I copied 8GB of random stuff to it and used FFS to synch it with a new folder on my backup drive. That worked fine.
Then I copied another 8GB of stuff to the new backup folder and ran Compare in FFS. As expected, it said that there was 8GB of stuff to copy to my new partition from the backup.
Then I opened SpaceSniffer and looked at my T drive - all was fine.
Then, with SpaceSniffer still running, I ran Sync in FFS and watched as an area of inaccessible space was created on T - and increased as I watched and as the sync ran. Eventually the sync stopped because it had run out of space.
After some further tests I discovered that the inaccessible space is the same size as the files I'm copying from the backup. It increases during the sync and doesn't get deleted at the end.
One other thing I'm going to try. My backups are on a compressed drive, I'll remove the compression and try again - that *may* have something to do with it - in which case FFS is not good at handling compressed drives. We'll see - I'll report back later.
- Posts: 6
- Joined: 10 Mar 2021
Hmm. It has nothing to do with compressed drives - and I've also now seen this inaccessible space created using just Explorer, so it's not a bug in FFS either. It's something that Windows is doing, but none of my file operations in Windows have resulted in more than 1.5GB inaccessible. Something about FFS makes this behaviour much worse - as I say, I watched an inaccessible area be created and grow while using FFS to copy a bunch of files from a backup to a virgin empty drive until the inaccessible bit prevented any further copying.
- Posts: 292
- Joined: 13 Apr 2017
I'm using FFS like you and I have never encountered your issue.
Did you run SpaceSniffer as administrator?
I mean right-click, run as administrator.
Did SpaceSniffer opens a window listing files it can't access?
If so than you are probably not running it as administrator.
Did you have found "unaccessible space" also on your backup drive?
Considering that you have used FFS many times in the past to backup your D: drive on this backup drive, I will expect it to show the same issue.
Anyway, SpaceSniffer is a very old tool and may be it can't track everything correctly.
Also strange is that on the SpaceSniffer site there is no mention about what means "unaccessible space".
In the SpaceSniffer Edit / Configure menu is called "unknown" what is then displayed as "unaccessible".
Shadow copies?
Did you run SpaceSniffer as administrator?
I mean right-click, run as administrator.
Did SpaceSniffer opens a window listing files it can't access?
If so than you are probably not running it as administrator.
Did you have found "unaccessible space" also on your backup drive?
Considering that you have used FFS many times in the past to backup your D: drive on this backup drive, I will expect it to show the same issue.
Anyway, SpaceSniffer is a very old tool and may be it can't track everything correctly.
Also strange is that on the SpaceSniffer site there is no mention about what means "unaccessible space".
In the SpaceSniffer Edit / Configure menu is called "unknown" what is then displayed as "unaccessible".
Shadow copies?
- Posts: 945
- Joined: 8 May 2006
What is D: ?I've been using FFS to back up my data partitions ... [to] ... my D drive
Another internal HDD?
A partition on the same HDD (as C: )?
External HDD? External in a NAS device or "just a plain old HDD connected via USB", or ...?
I have no idea what "Unaccessible space" means in the realm of SpaceSniffer, but see what Everything might find for you.
Set Everything up to use its' service.
Set it to index folder sizes (if that's not already a default).
Search (menu item) -> Folder
Sort by Size, descending
See if that points out anything?
System Volume Information or something along those lines, perhaps?
- Posts: 6
- Joined: 10 Mar 2021
D: is a partition on a separate SSD from my boot partitions.
I already use Everything, it didn't help. But I noticed that the inaccessible space was roughly the same size as my OneDrive folder so I disabled OneDrive and hey presto, no more inaccessible space. Then I re-enabled OneDrive and it didn't recreate the inaccessible space. So - problem solved, just not understood.
I already use Everything, it didn't help. But I noticed that the inaccessible space was roughly the same size as my OneDrive folder so I disabled OneDrive and hey presto, no more inaccessible space. Then I re-enabled OneDrive and it didn't recreate the inaccessible space. So - problem solved, just not understood.
