Freeing up Hard Drive on Vaio Z

I got a Vaio Z, but went for the 128GB instead of 192GB, so I find myself slightly strapped for room. I was wondering how I could free up some space in it by maybe uninstalling some Sony software (or maybe limiting what Windows can use for the recycle bin or something).

I currently have 18GB left after doing most of what I expect to (I have music, large games, other programs), but I anticipate needing around 10GB more and I've read that the SSD's in the Vaio should have around 15GB so they can do their garbage-collection. So, basically, what can I do to save a few gigabytes? What Sony software is completely unnecessary (I uninstalled some that sounded unnecessary, but some sounds important but isn't)? I want to keep the media gallery (unless it's a complete hog), hotkeys, and other such useful bits.

 

Have you removed the ~10 gb recovery partition?

 

Check my post here, maybe will help?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6454980-post6010.html

 

I don't believe I removed any recovery partition; how would I go about doing that (and do I want to?)? Better yet, can I transfer it to my external hard drive? Or write it onto a disk?

Thanks for the link, htwingnut. The recycle bin thing saved me an apparent six gigabytes (it had allocated seven, I reduced to three and deleted everything and free space shot up to 24GB). I'd do a reinstallation of Windows 7, but not all of the stuff Sony put on here is crap. I like the modified Synaptics driver (no weird rectangle on mouse, unlike the other driver), I like the media gallery, and I like the GPU drivers, brightness-buttons, volume-buttons, power saving options, etc.

I was wondering - is there any way to have it automatically save some things to my external hard drive? For example, the recycle bin - it saves it up for a while, and when I connect my external hard drive, as long as I'm not doing any other transfers, it would transfer and automatically clear my recycle bin. Is there any way to do that, and maybe extend it to some other things like system restores (those are more important, so I'd probably just back up system restores, not delete them)? It's a bother to do it manually.

 

Unfortunately, no, I don't believe there is a way to do such a thing. There is no way to move the recycle bin to another drive that I know of, let alone sync automatically when a drive is connected. You can set system restores to another drive or partition, but same thing, no way that I know of to sync it automatically or manually for that matter.

Personally, Recycle Bin is is just an "oh crap" type scenario if you accidentally deleted something. I can't ever recall a time when I had to look there for something from more than a day earlier. I empty it on a daily basis anyhow to keep it fresh. It's really an "undo" for your files and not really designed to keep stuff there for any length of time or be backed up for that matter.

Also, 1GB of system restore is good for about 4-5 save states, 2GB maybe up to 12. If you need more than that, then perhaps invest in a 500GB external HDD and buy a decent imaging or backup software, or use Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate's built-in backup. Home Premium Backup doesn't contain the detailed stuff that Pro or Ultimate do. But there's plenty of third party backup software that you can use for this too.

 

My lappy allocates 2.2 (2% of total space) for save states, which I think is reasonable, so I didn't change it. I WOULD like to keep the recycle bin large enough so I can recover things, but I do plan on keeping it clean.