folder disappear but still take space (how to fix corrupted files on the drive that are invisible --not just hidden)

Question

I post the question and answer in case it could help (strangely, I did not find it here).

problem: a folder was taking a lot of places, but since it was corrupted (copied from a failing hard drive), it wasn't visible (it wasn't just hidden). There was a discrepancy between the total space, the used space, and the free space: the total space was 500gb, the used space was 200, and the free space was 200 (the corrupted folder was 100gb).

Answer 1

The corrupted files/folders were on an external harddrive G: of 500gb

I ran this cmd as admin: chkdsk G: /f 

It solved the problem in few minutes. The corrupted files were showing, I just deleted them.

The command says:

Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
  14 reparse records processed.
  214742 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
 Phase duration (Index verification): 1.24 minutes.
CHKDSK is scanning unindexed files for reconnect to their original directory.
  1 unindexed files scanned.
Recovering orphaned file xps17 bkp 21_08_2020 xd in october 2020 (43A7) into directory file 5.
  1 unindexed files recovered to original directory.
 Phase duration (Orphan reconnection): 0.00 milliseconds.
  0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found.
 Phase duration (Orphan recovery to lost and found): 4.86 milliseconds.
  14 reparse records processed.
 Phase duration (Reparse point and Object ID verification): 3.05 milliseconds.

Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
Security descriptor verification completed.
 Phase duration (Security descriptor verification): 25.79 milliseconds.
  16156 data files processed.
 Phase duration (Data attribute verification): 2.57 milliseconds.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Usn Journal verification completed.
Correcting errors in the master file table's (MFT) BITMAP attribute.

Windows has made corrections to the file system.
No further action is required.

Details on https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/chkdsk