Member Avatar for P Chadwick

I own a Packard Bell PC Intel Celeron with 2.2 Ghz using Windows XP home. My hard disk has 60Gb capacity. It uses NTFS file system.
I had only used 17 Gb up to a week or two ago when i received a balloon warning informing me that my hard disk was full. I checked the disk using "Diskview" and 79% of the capacity was filled with .BAK. This is i am told is a Backup file extension. How has this happened,and how do i recover the 43Gb lost. ?
Any info would be greatly appreciated.

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Short summary tied to the thread: has a C: volume reporting almost no free space, a single very large file named S03591.BAK (~43 GB) and heavy fragmentation/MFT use. was right to flag the risk — protect irreplaceable data before attempting fixes.

First, find exactly where that .BAK lives and which files are actually large. A graphical disk map (WinDirStat) is the fastest way to see file paths and sizes:

From a command prompt you can also list .bak files with sizes. Example commands (run from an elevated cmd prompt — in a batch file double the % signs):

dir C:\*.bak /s /o:-s

or

for /r C:\ %i in (*.bak) do @echo %~zi %~fi

Those will show the full path and size so the owner/application can be identified.

If the file is legitimate (a backup from a known program), use that program to trim or remove old backups. If it looks orphaned, try copying the large file to an external drive first. If Windows refuses or the file is corrupt, repair the filesystem before defragmenting or deleting. Schedule an offline check with:

chkdsk C: /f /r

(See Microsoft docs for chkdsk usage: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/chkdsk.)

Notes and cautions:

  • Do not defragment until chkdsk completes; defragming a damaged NTFS can make things worse.
  • If the file is locked, boot a rescue/live medium (Windows PE or a Linux live CD) to copy/delete it.
  • If chkdsk cannot repair the volume or the MFT looks damaged, image the drive to external media before further writes so you have a safe snapshot for recovery or forensic work. For live tracing of which process is touching the file, Sysinternals Process Monitor can help: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon.

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Member Avatar for DMR

.bak is the extension used to identify backup files. Is this a single .bak file that is reportedly taking up the space, or multiple .bak files? If it's only a single file, that would almost cetainly point to some corruption with your filesytem; .bak files just simply do not get that large.

Try to check your drive for (and correct) filesystem errors; instructions for doing so in XP are given here:

Member Avatar for P Chadwick

Hi,
I checked the disk re your advice but still no joy. On the CHKDsk printout i have 19542 fragments using up 42.98 GB. There is a number SO39591 Prefix.

S03591.BAK. This is huge in comparison to the full file breakdown.
On the disk defrag printout it is as follows.

File Fragmentation

Volume HDD (C)
Volume size 53.94GB
Cluster size = 4KB
Used space=53.43GB
Free space = 520MB
Percent free space =0%

Total files 123,371
Ave file size 961Kb
Total fragemeted files 2570
Total excess fragments 26500


Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation=48%
File Fragmentation =84%
Free space fragmentation= 12%

Folder fragmentation
Total folders=6280
Fragmented folders=11
Excess folder fragments=304

Master file fragmentation
Total MFT size 146Mb
MFT record count=130,175
Percent MFT in use=87%
Total MFT fragments =86

Any ideas from this info? :!:

Member Avatar for DMR

At this point you should seriously think of backing up your critical data before proceeding with further repairs!!

Hi,
I checked the disk re your advice but still no joy.

Did the disk repair fail or refuse to run, or did it appear to run but just not fix anything?

- If it failed, please tell us the exact errors (if any) that you received.

- If it did run, did you make sure to check the "automatically fix file system errors" and "scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" option boxes?

Try a disk defrag if you haven't already. The amount of fragmentation reported in your printout may be inaccurate due to disk corruption, but if those numbers are correct, you have an extremely fragmented drive.

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