How exactly can I know how much Hardrive space I have on my M1330

Hey guys. I'm trying to figure out how much space I have on my hardrive but the new screen in Vista confuses me. I go to Start>Computer and I see 30 percent Free Recovery D, 60% Free Operating System and then Unspecified 1 DVD RW Drive (E).

My computer is 2 Gigs and has a 160GB capacity hardrive which I've had slightly less than a month so it should be ample space on it. I just want to know because I want to transfer my The Sims 2 Game files from my sisters old computer which can hardly handle all the files much less a new expansion pack. Her computer was an Inspiron 8600 with 1GB Ram and 52GB hardrive.

Once I know how much space I have, I can feel better about transfering them. But I hope it doesn't slow my computer down any. (I like it the way it is now.) Then my next issue will be actually transferring them lol

 

When your in "Computer", right-click your C drive and choose properties, this will give you more detailed info about your hard drive and a nice pie chart of space free/used.

D drive is the Dell recovery partition which is set to 10 GB, of which 6-7 GB is used by the recovery info. This can be deleted since Dell includes recovery discs.

E drive is "unspecified" because it's your DVD-RW drive which obviously doesn't have free space unless you have a blank disc in the drive.

There's also a hidden media direct partition that uses 3-4GB as well which is used when your computer boots directly into Media Direct mode.

If you want to get rid of the recovery partition and the media direct partion to gain the space back, you'll need disc partitioning software like Partition Magic, Acronis, etc. If you're unsure about any of this, I would recommend NOT deleting anything.

As for "transfering" the Sims over to your new computer, it's not as easy as just copying the files, you'll need the original discs to properly register the game in Windows. You should be able to copy your game saves/profile, which should be small, but I don't play that game so I couldn't tell you for sure where to grab them from to copy. Also a game will not "slow" your computer down, a game program doesn't operate in the background of Windows while the game isn't being played.

 

Okay I looked in Properties as you said and I have 44.6 GB Used and 91.8GB free space.

Kinda wishing I went for a bigger harddrive now. Since I know my Sim files will use up some space on it. Plus a new EP. But maybe I'm over estimating it. It should be fine though. I don't really need to put a ton of things on my harddrive anymore since I've discovered the convenience of tiny flash drives.

Thanks for explaining how to find that info.

 

or...you could snag an ext drive...

 

The ones that I see are usually over $100 and I don't think I want to spend that much.