Help-46 GB gone on BRAND NEW Vaio CR

I just bought a Sony Vaio CR with 160GB, but when I look at the specs it says I only have 141GB. It has Vista. BUT, on top of only having 141GB on my local disk, I only have 106GB free--and I haven't PUT ANYTHING ON IT YET-except for Microsoft Office 2003--BUT that's IT!! I uninstalled a bunch of preinstalled crap and the trial Microsoft Office 2007, but still only have 106GB. I tried asking Sony what's going on and I was told Vista takes up a lot of space--But I say no way can it be taking up this much space. I haven't put any programs, files, pictures, or anything else on it because at this point if I can't figure out where all my memory is going, I'm going to return it.
Can someone please tell me what's going on and if there's something I'm overlooking??
Thank you!

 

Sorry, that's what we call bloatware. Go into your control panel and click uninstall programs.

Oh, and when you buy a hard drive, you automatically lose about 8% of it. Even flash cards lose the 8% or so when you buy them. So you having 141GB is normal, and unavoidable.(my 320GB hard drive shows as only 291GB) Vista it's self only takes about 5GB off your main 141GB, so all the other is just garbage installed by sony..

 

There may also be a recovery partition that is taking up a decent amount of space. It usually shows up in Explorer, and assuming it's there it will just look like another hard drive other than c:

 

You are right that there might be a hidden partition, but I don't believe it will show up in explorer.

You will need a partioning tool.

 

That's true, you should be able to see it under Disk Management, but I know that I've seen multiple recovery partitions in Explorer. Either way, it's worth looking into. That would be a ton of bloatware if there isn't a recovery partition...

 

Hi there,

Vista's system recovery tool is probably what's doing it for you. Everytime you install or uninstall a program Vista creates a restore point which it then saves somewhere to get back your lost space simply right click on your c drive then click properties, disk clean up, files for all users, then on the disk clean up box you should see a tab that says more options.Click that then click clean up on the system restore and shadow copies section.

You should then have more space.

 

Vista's system recovery tool is probably what's doing it for you. Everytime you install or uninstall a program Vista creates a restore point which it then saves somewhere to get back your lost space simply right click on your c drive then click properties, disk clean up, files for all users, then on the disk clean up box you should see a tab that says more options.Click that then click clean up on the system restore and shadow copies section.

WOW! Thank you so much for this wonderful advice! I did this and within 30 seconds went from 106GB free to 120GB!!

I am wondering--What is bloatware and how do I get rid of that?

 

Bloatware is just the useless trial programs that muck up your computer that manufacturers tend to install. Often times the manufacturer gets some money or other compensation for installing these trials on their computer. The average PC user doesn't know to get rid of it, and I'm not generally pleased personally unless I do a clean install.

To remove the majority of it, go to the Control Panel and use the Add/Remove Programs thingy to see a list of the software installed. Nearly all of it can be removed.

 

No one "loses" anything. The discrepancy is there because computers use base 2 numeral (binary) while storage manufacturers advertise disk or flash memory capacity in base 10 (decimal).

 

See this thread: More about "lost" space on a hard drive

Gary

 

Thank you so much. I just recovered 28gig on my FZ190 from 101gig to 129gig.

 

Try the semi-clean install in my signature if you want. Your loss of space could come from a few things:

1. Vista measures a GB differently than your hard drive manufacturer (Fujitsu).
2. Windows allocates 15% of your drive for System Restore. You can delete old restore points by using Disk Cleanup. Better yet, you can resize this amount from the command line.
3. Simply uninstalling bloatware still leaves a lot of it behind. That's why I recommend a semi-clean install.
4. Your hidden recovery partition accounts for about 7GB of the space on your hard drive.

 

This process is correct, it does recover the space BUT at what cost? It wipes out all of the restore points. You need to use this carefully. Take the following scenario, you install some application, play with a new video driver and then install another application. Each one of these steps creates a restore point, lets call them point 1, point 2 and point 3. Now if at that point you use the process outlined above to delete all but the last restore point and then realize that the video driver you tried out is junk, you have no way to get back point 2, the one made as you installed the new driver. OUCH!

Unfortunately there is no way to remove SPECIFIC restore points. It's all or nothing.

So you need to be very careful. As I mentioned in the other thread on this topic, if you are NOT low on disk space then do not get rid of the restore points. Especially when the machine is new, you are uninstalling things you THINK might be bloatware, you are installing new applications, you are tweaking all manner of things. These restore points can be a great insurance policy and can save your butt.

The restore points are also a double edge sword! In the scenario above if we did go back to point 2 because we needed to roll back to the previous driver we could also loose the second app we installed. I always keep a chronicle with data and time stamps listing any applications I install and and tweaks or driver changes I make. Then if I do have to use a restore point I know which tweaks I need to redo and which apps I need to reinstall.

Gary

 

Just dump the Restore points while the sytem is stable and running well.

Than make sure you have restore points before you do something drastic.

 

Under XP, when the restore points contained ONLY program and operating system changes, that was good advice. But the scope of the restore points under Vista has changed drastically. They now provide the cache for the "Previous Versions" functionality for documents and all manner of other files besides just the programs and OS ones. (see the attachment)

Because of this, it would be nice if the if the option for dumping the restore points were not an "all or nothing" option. Being able to selectively choose a cutoff date would be nice. Something like "I want to delete all restore points more than two weeks old." Or even better, "I want to delete that one, and that one and that one and leave those four, etc."

Sounds like a task for a utility programmer! Any takers?

Gary

 

You know, you can install a full Linux setup, with MS-compatible office tools, in under 4 GB. And it's totally free. And there are add-on packages for everything from 3D modelling and animation to world-class software development tools, all free. No bloatware. I never use anything but Linux on any computer I own, and it works great on my TXN25N. Actually, Linux is so small and light (next to Windows) that it works great on just about any old hardware.

Just thought I'd mention it...