Solution to the Hard Drive Memory Loss problem!

I did lots of extensive searching and tried lots of things so I'm going to post the solution; but first, I'll explain the problem I had.

I have an IBM ThinkPad T61 with Vista 32bit and a 7200RPM 100GB Hard Drive. I transferred some stuff to my laptop when I first got it via an external hard drive; and after that, everything worked very smoothly. However, I noticed several days ago that my C Drive, the hard drive that is, said I only have 4-5 GB free, which was ridiculous a notion. When I searched through all the files on the computer, I could not find the source of what was taking up all that space.

However, after browsing these forums, I was clued in to the fact that it was likely being caused by the Rescue and Recovery that comes installed on the Thinkpads. Turns out, I was right. I guess I had inadvertently created a backup using the program onto my hard drive so it took up around 25-30GB.

After lots of attempts to find the file to delete it, I was unsuccessful. Then I decided to Google for help, and the support website said that if I uninstalled the Rescue and Recovery, it would delete the backup file that was taking up all the space. This corroborated with what was posted on the following website I found through searching http://blog.keeme.net/archives/1 .

Naturally, I continued to uninstall it; however, to my dismay, it still read that I only had 4-5 GB left and that 82GB was being used up. As such, my experience was not the same as some on the blog website, who had success after doing that. What I then did was reinstalled the system. I then ran the program and through it, checked if I had any available backups. It says that no backups were found; and at this point, I was concerned that maybe the backups weren't taking up the space. And because no backup was detected, I couldn't even attempt to delete it using the Rescue and Recovery system.

So what'd I do? I decided to try to create a back up with only 4GB memory. It asked if I wanted to proceed with such little space, and I said yes. After several minutes, and noting that the status bar was not moving at all, I hit cancel. This brought me back to the main R&R screen, and on a whim, I decided to try creating a backup again without cancelling. To my surprise, it no longer said that I had 4-5 GB available, but instead 27GB. Solution reached.

[The sad thing is that I didn't even notice the option to delete backups through the menu with my initial R&R installed. I only noticed it after I re-installed it, which may have been due to me changing some settings on my computer while looking for hidden files. Deleting via this method straightaway may work, and it's worth a shot. If not, the procedure I described should get the job done, too - or maybe the job'll get done somewhere along my procedure as it did for some people where their space was restored upon merely uninstalling].

Cheers!

And thanks for those that were attempting to help me during this annoying ordeal.

[I'm assuming the other 13GB on my hard drive is partitioned for recovery purposes and the OS and whatnot. Is that amount right or should it be lower?]

 

Many people seem to have a problem with missing space. The thing that puzzles me is how are guys having a problem with this? If it's an extra partition look at the partition table. If it's something taking up too much space on your drive, then search by the size of files and folders until you find it. There's no such thing as mysteriously missing space. It can all be found and it's not that hard. Sometimes it helps to look at the entire picture instead of OMGWTF I only have 5Gb?!?!

 

Dude it's not as easy as you think it is. Lenovo utilizes hidden partitions, mounted volumes, and attaches weird security settings to their files. After you install R&R, you will find that you have hidden folders or shortcuts on your C: that can't be accessed (no, changing owners/permissions in vista doesn't work because the file won't let you do that either) and can't be deleted. You don't even know what those kinds of folders contain, how much crap they contain, and how to get rid of them.

We're not idiots like you think. Don't insult us- we go farther than look at the pie chart in explorer. It would help if you looked at the big picture by reading my posts about why R&R is an incredibly shady program and how detecting what it does is harder than it seems instead of making assumptions about us being computer illiterate. Have you even skimmed some of the threads on this issue? We talk about how you just can't find the X GB file that's taking up all the room. It doesn't show up anywhere. If you think it's really that simple and we're all retards, please, step up to the plate and tell us where are HD space has gone.

 

Before criticizing, you might want to try burning a backup onto your drive.

I searched for files over 10GB, nothing showed. I made it so all hidden files were visible, etc, etc. All to no use.

 

is it recommended to even have Lenovos RR installed? I havent put it on yet and am not sure of the benefits over Vistas recovery?

 

That won't necessarily find it, because folders can be hidden from standard file exploration views (beyond just the hidden tag). The System Restore files are an example of this. They are locked away in the System Volume Information folder on your C: drive and are locked out even to the Administrator. If you don't have permission, you can't search it.

 

RnR will let you make a backup to your own hard drive, while Vista's built-in backup will only backup to external media.

 

It is likely then that the files were stored in a folder you don't have permission to access, thus Vista's search couldn't find it.

 

What's a normal amount of space to have from the start. I've only put on a gig worth of stuff on this notebook. My 100 GB hardrive is down to about 57 GB. Is that normal? I haven't deleted the recovery partition yet.

 

if you are doing a clean install, a sizable chunk will be in the Windows.old files. Those can be deleted.

 

did a clean install via upgrade disc and it used ~10 gigs

after a few driver installs (chipset, lan, video) it said a total of 12.5 gigs have now been used

went into vista's system restore and disabled the profiles and got my 2.5 gigs back.

thinkvantage not installed (yet)

good luck

 

My 120gb HD shows a total of 111 gb...can't figure it out.

 

Have you ever used the Rescue and Recovery program? You may have done the same thing I did and made a backup onto the hard drive.

Unless of course, you legitimately did use up that much space.

 

Tony,

that's the correct size for a 120gb hard drive. its a difference in binary counting vs decimal. 1000 vs 1024, 2000 vs 2048.....

the higher you go the difference becomes more significant.

 

Like batman said... they rate a 120GB HDD capacity as 120,000,000,000 bytes. When you do the conversion to GB you get 1.2e11 / (1024)^3 = 111GiB. There is a standard that uses and extra i such as GiB (as I used) or MiB (megabytes), or KiB (kilobytes) to differentiate from metric giga, mega, and kilo. Unlike the standard metric units, it goes by 1024 instead of 1000. So 1 KB means 1000 bytes but 1 KiB means 1024 bytes. Then of course 1 MiB means (1024)^2 bytes.

Some people think that the HDD manufacturers do it so they can report a higher number on the box than you actually get, but technically they're right because metric goes in 1000 and not 1024. It's much better not to butcher the metric system than it is for the consumer to have a little more space in my opinion.

On a completely different note about the metric system, I was trying to measure something with a tape measure in inches and feet. I was trying to get the measurement precise by guessing one place as is the standard sig fig rule but I realized that the ruler had 16!?! divisions in 1 inch. I was like I !@#$%^&*, I hate the imperial system. If I had to use imperial units in my engineering classes I'd just shoot myself to end the misery. They made us do a few with inches and stone!?! in physics once. At the bottom of every problem like it I put "I hate the imperial system" in very large red ink no less.

 

What is this disk 1 that is taking up 512 MB? It can't be the recovery partition. I used R&R 4 twice; Once I accidentally created a backup of the actual R&R program. The other time I tried backing up my recovery partition but my computer froze which caused it to think that it created a backup when it didn't. Both times I used the program I burned to a DVD. I'm not sure what that FAT32 file is that is taking up 512 MB. Can anyone help?

 

jd1010, do you have Turbo Memory? The "NV" also incites nVidia- maybe it cold have something to do with your video card as well.

 

batman and xnviews, much obliged for the conversion lesson. And so the mystery of the 1.44 mb floppy only having 1.38 space is solved as well. I should have suspected our lack of metric standards contributes to confusion on us novices. BTW, what is the 1/16 inch unit called?

 

It has nothing to do with our lack of metric standards. In reality, computer space is measured in binary numbers. These metric numbers are artifically imposed because they are easier to understand, but in no way accurately describe computer space.

 

I don't really understand your point. It's true to some extent that the size cutoffs are artificially imposed but they have to stop somewhere, right? There is not natural end to the space. By using metric prefixes, they've standardized the byte counting system. I don't see why that's a problem or undesirable.

"they are easier to understand, but in no way accurately describe computer space."

That's completely false. The metric measurements of storage devices ACCURATELY describe the number of bytes on the disk. Assuming a manufacturer is honest, a 2GB flash drive has 2,000,000,000 bytes present. This is an accurate measurement of the device's storage space. It is true that computers "count" in powers of 2 verses the metric power of 10 but base 2 can be converted to base 10 accurately.

I'll be the first to say that using GiB or MiB would be a great switch (barring the below) but it's not going to happen. As someone who has to explain a lot of basic computer technology to people I would rather it not happen.

 

It's my fault for being unclear in my post. In terms of describing accuracy vs. artificial cutoff, I was placing the Windows counting system on a pedastal. The binary system by which Windows detects HD space is the "accurate" one whereas the numbers on the retail boxes are just there to make things easier.

 

For others looking to fix this issue just do it through R&R itself. The other procedure is wayyy too much work compared to a few clicks. I had this problem, all I had to do was find the option and it was taken care of.

 

Just a little tidbit- if you disable hibernation through command prompt in Vista, you'll get a little over 4GB's back on the HDD.

 

Yeah.....but hibernation rules.

 

Says johnny, but i prefer to shutdown at the end of the night. Seeing my HDD's space increase by 4GB+ by disabling hibernation brings a smile to my face.

 

you need a bigger hard drive if 4GB makes that much of a difference to you.

 

It was a joke.