Where has the disk space gone?

[Nick]

Last thought on this - its possible, with all the deletes going on, that your external disk has filled with restore points and file versions.

before you initialise it, just go to Control Panel->System Protection

If, under Available Drives, your external drive is listed, click on the drive entry then Configure.

In the Restore Settings section, select Turn off system protection.

Under Disk space usage, then select the Delete button to remove all restore points and old file versions on that drive.

Then press OK.

I suspect that will have an serious impact!