Where is my hard drive space going on my DV5T??

I have had my dv5t 6 days. Every time I check, there is less and less space and I am doing nothing really but surfing and e-mailing, and trying to get the TV tuner to work right. lLast night there was 177GB free, shut it down and went to bed. Checked it after a half hour or so this morning and there was 175 GB, now here I sit in the library and I just checked it again after e-mailing and downloading a 2mb file, and there is 173 GB free. I haven't even begun to use it. Juse a few days ago there was 183. Does anyone know what could be going on?

Forgive me if this is in the wrong forum, I thought this would be a good place to start. Thank you.

 

It would help to know...the OS.

 

Chances are that Vista is creating System Restore points.

Go to Computer > Right-click HD in question > Properties > Disk Cleanup

You should get a detailed list of things Windows will clean up for you. For SR points, you can go to the More Options menu to delete the most recent restore points.

Alternatively, you can use a program such as Ccleaner.

 

Sorry. Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit. 250GB hard drive.

 

Yeh, i have the same issue as you cathiw, but pretty sure its vista creating loads of restore points. You can set how much memory vista has to allocate to restore points:

http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/25/change-the-system-restore-size-in-windows-vista/

 

Thanks, I downloaded and installed cc cleaner. When I tried disk cleanup, I find an entry "per user queued windows error report" at 4.15 GB. What is that? Also, what is Hibernation File Cleaner? That is 2.99 GB.?

Thanks.

 

The Windows error reports are files that Windows creates in order to submit various diagnostic information when an error occurs. I think it also dumps BSOD memory dumps in these files, but I am not sure on that. In any case, it is safe to delete.

On the other hand, the hibernation file cleaner will delete the hiber.sys file that Windows uses to hibernate (ie, write RAM to disk and shut everything off, allowing you to resume later). If you plan on using this function, it would be best to leave it alone.

 

The "per user queued..." are the error reports that your laptop wants to send to Microsoft to tell Microsoft that IE7 hung. What Microsoft does with that, I don't know. I would feel safe getting rid of those reports. You probably have them that large, because you're on dialup...

Don't remove your hibernation file!!!! That's 3GB, which is the size of your RAM. This allows your laptop to hibernate (i.e. put all the data that's in RAM into a special file on your hard disk. Hibernate is kind of like "super sleep."). In hibernate, you use zero power (in sleep, you'll use 1-5 W). Resuming from hibernate takes typically less than 30 seconds, compared to starting up from power-off, which is typically longer than 1 minute.

I personally have not used ccleaner, so I would be very interested in reading your review of it after you've used it!