Purchased 100GB (7200 RPM) HD - Vista says only 66 GB of 88 GB available? [X61]

I understand the recovery partition is probably 5-6 GB, and the OS may consume another 5-6 GB, but that leaves nearly 22 GB mysteriously missing! Could this ALL be bloatware that came with Lenovo? Could the partition be 12 GB in size (thus explaining the 88GB number?). I would call Lenovo and ask, but feel as if I've listened to the wait music far too often these past few weeks...

Any thoughts/theories/rants?

 

google/ search function = prevent pointless threads

 

you are pretty optimistic if you think vista is only using 5-6gig. If you are using the preinstall from lenovo you are probably well over 20gig for the os installation. Vista is usually between 8 and 10 gigs clean.

 

Here's a theory:

You bought 100 gigs.

Windows formatting makes it down to ~94

Hidden partition takes 6 gigs, down to ~88

Vista and other programs take up 22 gigs, down to ~66

So you hard drive is 94 gigs, 6 of those are hidden.

You have 88 gigs available. 66 of those are free.

That's it, simple as that.

 

That sounds about right. I have a 120GB drive and have 75GB left. This with all the ThinkVantage programs installed, Vista updates, and Office 2007.

 

I get it - Google is a search engine. So, the next time I have a question about my Lenovo notebook, I should just ask Google. In fact, anytime anyone has any question about anything, they should Google it.

You don't need a PhD in statistics to realize that the fewer people who post questions like these (in forums like these), the fewer sources of centralized information that exist for Google to index and make accessible. In other words, Google's model succeeds precisely because people ask questions in places where they can expect their questions to be answered. Over time, the question asked often enough yields the same search results -- the best and most relevant.

But if I have to use Babelfish to translate some Russian from a weird thread that may or may not answer my question but happens to be the first search result [and this has happened] for my (possibly poorly- or incorrectly- worded Google search), that's a tremendous waste of time and resources -- moreso than simply hopping onto a dedicated forum and asking folks who are likely to know the answer (but not, as your response makes evident, required to answer) to help out.

In even simpler terms, Google needs centralized/relevant information to INDEX. If the answer is always "use Google" as you unhelpfully suggest, over time, programmers may as well rewrite Google's algorithm to a 1KB WWW randomizer.

Thanks a lot folks - that makes complete sense and has put my mind at ease. I had no idea that Vista was such a beast. Makes me wonder about the folks who have even smaller HDs!

 

To add what other have, what also might be taking up HD space is the hibernation file allocation and the system restore ammount that is being allocated. If you use hibernation then vista automatically mirrors the ammount of HD space as you have of RAM. I believe the system restore allocation is initially set to use 15% of your available HD space. So a clean install of vista will have a larger restore allocation since there would be no programs installed besides the OS.

To change the system restore ammount, go to the cmd prompt and run as administrator. then type this, with your info for the drive and size in brackets:

vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /On=[drive]: /For=[drive]: /Maxsize=[size]

or you can just google it.

 

search engines were created for a reason: to search for stuff you do not know about. this forum was also created for a reason: to ask questions about things u cannot find on your own. a quick search of terms like "lenovo bloatware" or "size of vista install" would have quickly turned up results

 

Thanks, that's neat -- I will definitely give that a go as soon as I can (and will further Google the matter, of course

 

Don't take it personally. EskimoChaos has his own share of pointless threads ("T61p has ARRIVED LOLZ!").

 

actually, i was the first to state that the t61p would be released on the 10th - it showed up 1 day after that

 

So you were wrong......

 

LOL:laugh: