missing hard drive space

I am somehow missing space on my C partition. I own a DV6500 btw. Partition C shows 100GB free out of 140 GB. However all files and folders in C drive only add up to about 15GB... So what happened to the rest and why is showing 100 out of 140?

 

factory reset partition on the harddrive. every harddrive comes with it, so you never get the full amount.

if u buy a 120gig , u'll probably see like 109 gig of it. or something like that

 

Make sure you've enabled viewing of system and hidden files/folders.

 

Not only the recovery partition, but the quoted size of the hard drive is raw gigs. What you get after formatting is much less. Read my guide and you'll see what I mean (click link in my sig).

DV6500T with 120 gig hard drive. After Vista installs all bloatware, 85 gigs left, pathetic.
DV6500T with 120 gig hard drive. After complete format and partition of drives, 111 gigs left.

DV6500T with 160 gig hard drive. After complete format and partition of drives, 150 gigs left.

 

the recovery partition and the OS takes up alot of space.

 

Everyone who has replied to this, please take note. The stock answers of "your recovery partition" and "1024 != 1000" also apply, but when dealing with Vista, you also must also mention the Volume Shadow Copy service. This service by default uses 15% of the hard disk space for deleted files, multiple versions, system restore points, etc...

This is the most likely reason people are reporting "missing space" on their hard disk with Vista.

You can tune these settings by following this information: http://lifehacker.com/software/windows-vista/vista-tip--reduce-system-restore-disk-usage-254365.php

 

Well actually I am aware of the recovery partition. Thats another partition. Partition C is 140 GB formatted. It shows 100 GB out of 140 GB free. I put also to show all hidden folders and files. Things still don't add up. I understand my total space will be less then 160 but I am not even really talking about that. The space doesn't add up on the one partition alone which Vista shows as total size of 140GB formatted.

 

I had the same sort of problem I brought one with a 160 gig HDD and when I got to have a look it only show two drives totaling 148.55
I understand you will lose some in teh partitioning but over 10gig.....
give me a break
I'm not taling free space here I'm taking overall
I am most upset and have returned it saying it has the wrong HDD in it

 

Lol. All 160 GB HDD's have 149 true gigs. It's the difference between binary and the base-10 metric system. They don't make 148.55 GB HDD. You got the right computer.

 

Correct. Hard drive manufacturers and OEM sellers call a "gigabyte" one billion bytes or 10^9. However OS manufacturers consider a gigabyte to be 1073741824 bytes, or 2^30. Thus 160GB drives have 160,000,000,000 bytes, which is really only 149GB. Take off some space for formatting, and 148.55 is quite normal.

 

talked to HP and they sent me this link but I have returned the laptop so cant test it
it may help you
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?docname=c00870036&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&jum

 

I have a similar situation. Is this false advertising, or what?

I paid for a 160 gb drive and wasn't told almost 20 gb of it would be used by a recovery partition. Not to mention that another 2.5 GB is taken by a SWSetup folder and who knows how many more GB of resource draining bloatware.

 

Just do a clean install, you'll see all 140+ GB and it will run much faster.

 

Clean install is a pain though and all the HP junk will be back anyways. Check out these pics and see how it doesnt add up.



Any software I could try?

 

I'm not sure, but does that selection include things such as the Shadow Copy service, the Hibernation file, and the Page file?

 

No, the properties dialog box does not.

If you are missing drive space, try this:

• Open a command prompt as Administrator
• Type: vssadmin list shadowstorage

That should show you how much space is used for the shadow copy stuff. Default is 15%! 15% on a 140GB drive is 21GB!!!

 

Wow, that is a lot of space to lose with no explanation.

What's weird is I did a clean install with my dual boot machine, and Vista only uses up the 8 gigs of the OS itself. So something must be telling your version to use a ton of space for the page file or shadow copy.

 

Interesting, that looks very similar to "WinDirStat", except windirstat is free.

 

The point of a clean install is to get rid of the HP junk. The HP junk won't just magically pop up on your clean OS. It's also a lot easier than trying to find where your missing data is, but I do believe it's in the virtual files. Turn off system restore.

 

Clean install = Install from Vista disc, no junk software

System Restore Disc Install = Install from system restore discs, makes the system just like out of the box, including junk software.

 

Thanks guys. It was Shadow Storage taking up 20GB of space. I resized to about 5GB. Any huge disadvantages? I just can't restore as far back...correct?

 

Obviously was having a dumb moment there. I did figure out the shadow stroage issue and strunk out as you can see in my previous post. How would I do a clean install with HP notebook? Do I use the Windows Anytime Upgrade Disk?

 

Correct, you won't have as many restore points. Personally I think Shadow Copy is pretty useless (for me at least), as any important data I have copies of, and everything else I can just reinstall.

 

Take a look at the guide in my sig.