How do I only have 30GB of free space?

I have the same programs that I have installed on my dell 1000 and it only has a 80GB hard drive with windows xp with get this, 60GB of free space! Yet, this laptop has a 120 GB hard drive with vista. I am trying to find out where is all my space going? I have 2 external drives for all my video files ect

 

I think some of it might be getting used by System Restore.

 

Actual usable size of a 120GB is around 111GB because HDD manufacturers advertise size in GBs with 1000^3 bits instead of 1024^3. Then you have:
~10GB for DELL recovery partition
~3GB for MediaDirect
~11GB for a clean installation of Vista
~6GB for Page File + Hibernate File
= leaving you with around 80GB for other programs and data. Out of that Vista eats up around another 15% for System restore as Voodoofreak said. Your Program Files using the rest, but still only 30GB of free space seems a little odd.

 

if so, that's some system restore :O

is there some way to control the amount of space for this like in xp?

 

To view already allocated space for system restore :

Code:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

To limit the size : (give the size after Maxsize=)

Code:

vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /Maxsize=3GB

( Source)

 

thanks phoenixfx for the information. I will definetly try it