25 GB lost on my CR

I have 25GB on my hard drive that are unaccounted for. my hard drive of "160GB" appears to be 149Gb including the hidden partition. is it normal to have 11GB less?!! and some other 25GBs i don't have the faintest idea where they are... adding up windows files (11GB), my personal files (30GB), program files (5.3GB) i get something like 44GB, but my disk claims to be using 69 GB! does anyone know where these considerable amount of space could be? and how to get them back, if thats possible ?

 

Hard drive manufacturers use 1 million bytes to 1MB, but OSes use 1,048,576 bytes to 1MB. So a 160GB (manufacturer advertised) is really around 152GB.

 

Also, Windows allocates 15% of your HD space to System Restore. I changed mine to 7GB via command prompt.

 

Also, there is a (1) a recovery partition that will eat up some space, and a (2) pagefile that you'll have to have.

 

Okay, i recovered 10Gb from the System Restore's 15% steal, and thinking about burning some recovery disks, to get those 7GBs there... i just have a question there: is it the same thing to have the partition or the recovery disks? do they work exactly the same? will i be missing something if i remove the not-so-hidden partition ?

 

burning recovery disks are the exact same thing

 

Only problem you'll have with the disc is that if you lose it or it gets scratched, the disc might not work and then you're really out of luck. I'd rather just have the hidden partition because 7 gigs is not that big of a deal when compared to what happens if you didn't have a backup plan.

 

Yeah, but having all the files in the hard drive has its risks as well, if the disk gets damaged, you won't be able to restore (at least not to factory settings). Hm, i was thinking in burning them, because i happen to have plenty of DL dvds. But yeah, right now i don't need 7GBs. i don't know if having more space available could speed things a little.

 

easiest way, create the recovery disc's.

Then use an app like nero to create iso's of the recovery cd's and store them some where safe.

The you can free up the 7gb taken by the recovery partition. I know this isnt possible for alot of people, But if you have an external drive you use as backups you could put them on there.

That way you have the recovery cd's + the iso images. If one fails you can repair from the other.

I hate having recovery partitions on my laptop lol.

 

I'm having a similar problem--46GB gone from my 160GB hard drive. Haven't put a thing on my computer yet except for Office 2003. I'm not very computer literate, so would love some easy to follow advice--how do I burn the recovery partition to my external hard drive and erase it? And do I need to change the 15% to 7 GB, or can I bypass that route? Basically, I just want to free up as much space as possible and get rid of the hidden partition thing. If I can't figure this out, I want to return this computer because 46GB is too much used up space for a brand new computer!
Thank you for your help!

 

Man something really does eat up the Hard Drive space doesn't it? I have a 680sz Vaio with a supposed 160gig hard drive but right now it's showing that I have 120 gigs out of 140. I think I've only installed about 2 gigs worth of stuff so far.

That just shows you that it's good to get the biggest hard drive you can afford.


Ok... new question. I'm new to Window's Vista and am curious how you change the amount of HD usable for system restore from the 15% standard to something lower? I've clicked around a lot and still can't find it. I could always find it in XP...

 

Why bother? Don't mess with it UNTIL you start to run low on space. Right now it is using the space to provide a VERY useful service to you, namely providing an easy way to roll back your configuration to a particular point in time. Especially when a machine is new and you are playing around with installing new stuff, deleting what you THINK might be non essential stuff this sort of insurance policy is INVALUABLE. Right now you have 120 gigs available, why NOT allow part of that to be used for something that just might save your butt?

One other important point, the system restore functionality in Vista is now extended BEYOND the operating system and programs. It includes your documents and files too! This part of the disk that some folks seem to think is a WASTE of space is keeping backup copies of your documents and allows you to roll back to an older copy of a file YOU create.

Gary

 

Excellent point

But let's say that I had a full hard drive... how do a turn it fom %15 to %10 of my hard drive space available for system restore in Vista?

 

Google is your friend: How to reduce the space used by system restore.


I want to THANK YOU for bringing up the topic, because I didn't realize there is an issue with this feature for those of us who have repartitioned our drives into more than one volume. By default the System Restore feature and it's handmaiden the "Previous Versions" protection for documents and user files is ONLY turned on for the C: drive. If you have a D: drive like I do, you must explicitly turn on the functionality. To do so, go to Control Panel | System then in the left pane select "System Protection" you will see a list of the NTFS volumes on your machine with check boxes next to each. These indicate which volumes are being protected. (My D: drive was not. And I have the "My Documents" folder there!!! Again THANK YOU for bringing up the topic I was under the incorrect impression that the D: drive and everything on it was being protected)

Also notice I said NTFS volumes in the above paragraph. Apparently this only works on NTFS volumes. I have a third voulme that is Fat32 which I use for Ghost images. It was not shown in the System Protection tab referenced above.


Gary

 

You'll have the same problem if your hard disk goes bad :-D Keep both recovery CD/DVD and recovery partition to be on the safe side.