Read freebanner's post above also formatting to NTFS/FAT32 (so windows can use the drive) usually takes up a few GB...
size of file you watch: 1.86G size of the folder where the watched file is in: 18G (that is drive c pagefile 1.86 g is ok. you need to check for other files and folders that eat up space. with 1.86 of 18 the area in sequoiaview should be around 10% of total size of the window. if the area of the pagefilesys looks much bigger then there are still files that are not displayed. @tmpscript: formatting NTFS does not hurt much. MFT takes some space, but always depending on drive size. MFT will not allocated big G on small drives. most ppl simple mixup 80GB harddrive with 80.000.000.000 byte harddrive! 80GB is 80*10^6 but Windows shows GB as 2^30. so a 80GB drive becomes 74.5G shown in windows but still having 80.000.000.000 bytes!
When I see 4 directories : program files, win, document and settings, pagefilte(that are my directories on c) program files: dir =2.79 (many files there) win dir=1.93 (many files there) documents dir=1.04 (many files there) pagefile dir 18G file=1.86, which mean dir appear not to be the size of c: dir is sze of the that dir, where pagefile is. In that part, I see no other files, it's gray area without lines.
When I formatted I remember that I did this not from CD, but from C: So is it possible that to be back ups??? How can I check, whether I have back up data?
and if so they would be visible. what is size of c:\recycler? the only thing that comes to mind is " alternate data streams" or "sparse files". but both should not be problem if done a clean install. did you install from scratch only or copied data from other ntfs drive? edit: copied tmp emule files and had use of sparse files enabled?
After unchecking "hide of protected system files" , as you said I see only this on c: config.msi 0 install 0 msocache 0 recycler 9.39k system volume information 0 ??? pagefile 1.89 G win 1.92G program files 2.78G document and settings 1.03G other <10M "and if so they would be visible." where? I re-installed from scratch several times(i meat over existing windows), and not from cd, from my hard drive.
make image of c: and store on e: (acronis, ghost or other) install from original CD and format c: partition. after install check c: for size and used size start installing apps and after each install check if something really strange happened.