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    hard drive spacae disappearing...

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by gkizzle3622, Jul 17, 2008.

  1. gkizzle3622

    gkizzle3622 Notebook Enthusiast

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    i have a 320 gb hard drive. i know that no matter what i'll never have 320gb free after os setup and drives. so i start with about 295 gb. it says i'm down to about 205 gb but i have only put about 56 gb on the computer. what the heck is going on??? btw i did reformat the hard drive to remove the bloatware when i first got the computer a week ago.
     
    gkizzle3622, Jul 17, 2008
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  2. scottbenntt

    scottbenntt Notebook Consultant

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    simple mate i have the same drive i noticed it to its just vista creating restore points check out the vista tips and tweaks guide about how to turn it off ext it can use as much as 20GB i think...
     
    scottbenntt, Jul 17, 2008
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  3. lazard

    lazard Notebook Deity

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    you can either:
    1. disable system restore
    2. change it to use less disk place for restore points (i believe default is like 20% of HD)
    3. Delete the old restore points
     
    lazard, Jul 17, 2008
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  4. Forte

    Forte NBR's Supreme Angel

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    Another reason why 320GB doesnt actually give you 320GB of space, is also because of the fact by default file allocation is by default 4092 bytes per byte. (Its the way the drive is formatted so you can't change it without formatting) It provides best performance, though it takes up more space, since a single byte is expanded to fill 4092 bytes.
     
    Forte, Jul 17, 2008
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  5. gkizzle3622

    gkizzle3622 Notebook Enthusiast

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    well i'm not worried about getting the whole 320gb. i'm wondering why it says i've used 96 gb when i only have 56 gb of files on the computer.
     
    gkizzle3622, Jul 17, 2008
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  6. gkizzle3622

    gkizzle3622 Notebook Enthusiast

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    i knew how much memory i had free after i installed vista and drivers. then i put games music and movies on (56 gbs of them) and it said it used 90 gb
     
    gkizzle3622, Jul 17, 2008
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  7. gkizzle3622

    gkizzle3622 Notebook Enthusiast

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    k so i deleted all but the most recent system restore point and that freed of 30 gig. yay! =)

    thread may be closed
     
    gkizzle3622, Jul 17, 2008
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