[a2themfk]

not sure where to put this thread but here goes ?

bought a brand new sony laptop on fri of last week vaio ns series
got it home only to find that the 250gb hardrive was actually 224gb i knew it wouldn't be the quoated 250 but i though a bit higher than 224 anyways all was cool, set about putting a few programs onto it and doin the windows vista update's as prompted, to my suprise im now down to 170gb after a weekends use ***
all the programs ive installed are reasonably small and i aint got a lot of music or films on it to justify 34gb. ive ran cc cleaner and system mech still no joy.
all ive installed since i got it are
-sony sonic stage (6 albums in the libary)
-cc cleaner
-nero 8 and removed to replace with nero 9 basic version
-avg 8
-vlc media player
-bit torrent stable
-xilisoft video converter
any pointers as to where it could have gone ?
are the windows vista updates soooo large ?
i would like to get to the bottom of this now and do something about it before i get further down the line.
ive burnt off a set of recovery disc's if that makes any differance ?
any pointers welcome
cheers D

[RobM]

Get hold of a program called TreeSize Lite (the free version of TreeSize Pro) and run it against your C: drive. This will list your folders in order of size and allow you to drill down into sub-folders to see what's taking up your space.

I'd bet it was temporary files from installations and Windows Update uninstall files. You may also find you're music, videos, pictures and documents take up more space than you think... it's amazing how they grow over time!

[a2themfk]

cheers rob, but im still none the wiser

31gb found -
12.5gb windows
6.7gb user
6.2gb files
4.6gb program files
1gb program data

so my hardrive came with 224gb of which i could use 202gb, the other 22gb is then is for the operating system vista ?
and the above 31gb means that its all accounted for then.
so why does windows need another 12.5gb ?
and what are the "user" and "files" catergories for ?
im thinking files are MY files of music, photos's etc.
sorry if im being really stupid here
cheers D

[Singh400]

A 250 GB hard drive, will give you 232.75 GB of "real" space. So right from the get go, you are missing around 8.75 GB of space. I'm thinking backup/restore/install partition.

Check what size the WinSXS folder is in C:\Windows.

[a2themfk]

Originally Posted by Singh400

A 250 GB hard drive, will give you 232.75 GB of "real" space. So right from the get go, you are missing around 8.75 GB of space. I'm thinking backup/restore/install partition.

Check what size the WinSXS folder is in C:\Windows.

Its 5.5GB
as you said out of the box before i did anything hard drive was 224 with 202 to play with ?

again man im sorry for sounding dumb but any more info on the "backup/restore/install partition" thing ?
D

[Eric55]

I think system restore uses 10% of the hard drive. Do a disk clean up then go to more options then do a clean up of system restore and shadow copies

[Singh400]

Originally Posted by a2themfk

Its 5.5GB

Ahhh that isn't too bad. I've heard horror stories with WinSXS sucking up HDD space.

Originally Posted by a2themfk

as you said out of the box before i did anything hard drive was 224 with 202 to play with ?

again man im sorry for sounding dumb but any more info on the "backup/restore/install partition" thing ?
D

I'm thinking with System Restore turned on, and the amount of the space that takes with a restore partition that everything adds up.

A restore partition is often found on OEM machines, where the OEM install everything neccesary to re-install onto a hidden system partition. It can be accessed by mashing one of the Function keys.

[pix1985]

Originally Posted by Eric55

I think system restore uses 10% of the hard drive. Do a disk clean up then go to more options then do a clean up of system restore and shadow copies

System restore is configurable to take as much spare HDD as you want it to from 1% to 12%. To change this right click my computer, go to properties and select the restore tab. I would recommend if your system is currently stable to select "turn off system restore" and see how much this clears up. If you want to turn it back on afterwards then it will create a new restore point.
you also say that you have installed CCleaner. Have you run it? there's an option in there under Options>Advanced to only delete temporary files older than 48 hours. If you've only used it over the weekend it may be an idea to unselect this option and run the cleaner again to see how much it removes.
Good call on Treesize
Also, don't forget that you will need to leave an additional 15% free on the HDD for your swap file.

[wormvortex]

Turn off hibernation (that uses a few GB) and turn down the number of system restore points.