Question: Hard drive capacity after Vista 64 install

Hey guys, hoping for some help here.

I recently bought a T400 (love it, btw ). It shipped with a 160gb hard drive and was pre-loaded with XP Pro. I did a clean install of Vista 64, but did NOT format the hard drive beforehand. After installing x64, I loaded the drivers and few applications (iTunes, Acronis True Image, etc), but no substantial amounts of data. My problem is that I am only showing 72gb remaining on a 160gb hdd. I know the system files take up a good part of the hard drive, but I am at less than 50% already!

Since I haven't gotten too far into installing programs and migrating data to the new laptop, should I completely format the hard drive an try again with installing Vista x64? Any other suggestions to what the problem may be?

Thanks in advance

 

Vista Ultimate X64 takes about 25 Gigs

 

I would say I've loaded maybe 10gb worth of data on the drive thus far (and probably closer to 3gb actually). I'm still missing dozens of gig's of space. Is it possible the previous XP preload is hidden somewhere on the partition? Is there a way to fix this without doing a complete formatting?

 

Be aware that hard drive manufacturers define things differently, so 160GB is actually closer to maybe 140GB. It has to do with the way they define a megabyte (1000KB vs 1024KB), so in the end, you'll always basically be ripped off.

What could be happening is Vista is using the free space for system restore space. There's a quick fix for this, and you can instantly gain a few dozen gigs:

1. Go to start >> run (just type "run" w/o quotes into the start menu)
2. Type in "cmd" into the Run window and hit enter.
3. Type or copy/paste the following:
vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /On=C: /For=C: /MaxSize=5GB

You can change the 5GB part to any size you like. I'd recommend anything over 4GB, as that's usually enough for about 2+ system restore points in case something does go wrong.

Try that, see what happens.

EDIT:
If you're not up for system commands, run this little utility, SpaceMonger, that lets you see what's taking up so much space. It's awesome:
http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/v1x.php

 

Thanks dtd00d, I tried but no luck. I know the actual capacity is always less, but it feels like I am still missing way more than normal. I might end up just reformatting the drive completely this time and reinstalling Vista and hope for the best.

 

some of your space is in the restore partition

 

How much RAM do you have??

If you have 4GB, you will lose 8GB of space by default (4GB for hibernate, 4GB for swap [this can grow larger]).

Other things to check: System Restore, Volume Shadow Copy, Windows Side by Side, and all the other normal Windows things.

You can use the program WInDirStat to get a graphical breakdown of your drive usage.

 

It is likely system restore. If you disable it, you should recover quite a bit of space back.

 

Yup. By changing the folder options in control panel to show hidden files and show system files, I also find a 4gig hibernation file on my main partition as well as a 4 gig page file.

25 gigs for vista + 1 - 2 gigs for drivers + 8 gigs for these files + your old XP files + your 10gigs of stuff + your system restore = about 70gigs?