SW_preload

I got a newT61 a few weeks ago and have a couple of questions about the HD. I am what you might call a "newbie" so please bear with me and my dumb questions.

1) I have a 120 GB HD and see this showing up as only 105 in vista. Am I right to assume that the other 15 GB are eaten up in formatting and some kind of hidden backup partition?

2) This question may have been addressed in another thread, but I haven't been able to locate it: I didn't get very far into dumping files into my C drive when I noticed that I have only 20% free space. 20%??? ... Vista is taking up some 8 or 9 GB, and I have added couple GB in pictures, 18 GB in music, and a few installed programs ... not totaling much more than 30. so where did the other 50 some-odd GB go? I didn't look as I pulled it out of the box, but my guess is that it just came like that - with some hidden files preloaded, LOTS of em. I can't find them anywhere.

3) So, what is SW_preload anyway? I saw some talk in this forum about a clean install, will that make this thing go away? Thinkvantage keeps getting in the way of some of my apps. It's really getting on my nerves.


thanks,

leonid

 

SW_preload is just the name of your hard drive.

You can rename it if you want.

 

A 120GB is really like a 112GB. Windows and hard drive makers use different ways to measure hard drive capacity. Windows uses binary while drive makers use decimal. The rest it is the hidden recovery partition.

 

1) There is a hidden partition one the harddrive on about 7 GB. The partition stores the vista installation files and Lenovo drivers and system files. With ThinkVantage you have the possibility to burn the vista installation and Lenovo drivers/system files out on DVD/CD.

3) Sw_preload is just the name of the partition. Right click on the partition in Windows Explorer and choice properties. There you can rename the partition to a name you like.

 

Also, depends on how much ram you have.. You will have an equal amount of Swap and hibernate storage on the disc

 

As a follow-up to what Zaz pointed out, you can always plan on Windows reporting your hard drive space being about 7% less than what it is rated. For the reasons ZaZ already pointed out.

As for the ThinkVantage stuff getting in the way, I would look into options of doing a clean install. You can use base administrator or you can just wipe the hard drive clean and start over.

If you have a look at the clean install guide in my sig you can learn how to do that. Also, there are two ways (that I know of) to get rid of that hidden partition. That is also explained in the guide.

 

Great, thanks for the info on questions 1) & 3). greatly appreciated.

but has anyone else had a problem like 2)? a HD coming from the factory already half full? vista says that C drive has 21.6 GB free out of a total 105 GB. I can only account for about 35 of those 83.4 GB. Nothing else shows up in Computer and I don't really know how else to search for crazy hidden stuff.

thanks again.

 

Could search the drive for large files or folders. R & R might be making some backups.

 

That's right! The new Thinkpads a scheduled to do backups quite often! Run R & R to see all backups and to manage them.