16 Gb unaccounted for, in a Seagate Momentus XT

Just did a Win 7 clean install on a Seagate Momentus XT. BTW, the drive is amazingly fast! My computer couldn't be any faster. Indeed, most applications open instantly, pictures load instantly, boot time is about 30 sec, shutdowns, about 10 sec, and since I have a very fast Internet connection, surfing the Net is a breeze.
The 500 Gb the XT offers, are plenty for me and I am not complaining. But some of the space seems to have vanished.
After the install, total capacity was 466 Gb, wich was to be expected from 500. Now, here is the actual repartition of the Gbs (rounded) as it is now:
Windows: 14 Gb
SWSetup: 3.6 Gb
2 Program Files: 4 Gb
Misc: 1 Gb
So, total Gb used is actually 22.6 or 23 Gb rounded.
466 - 23 is 443 Gb, but the Properties of the drive shows free space as only 427 Gb or 39 Gb used, not 23.
BTW, as a test, I already recuperated 6 Gb by deactivating Hibernate. I don't really need the space, just wanted to investigate.
So, I got 16 Gb unaccounted for. Where did they go?

 

8GB RAM, any chance you didn't count the page file ? as for deactivate hibernation, have you delete the file as well ? turn on 'view hidden' file under control panel -> folder option and check the C:\ to see if these two files present.

 

There is overhead in all file systems. NTFS for all of it's advantages can use as much as 5% of available disk space for redundancy and metadata.

Note that this is not necessarily 'bad' nor in the strictest sense of the work, is it really 'overhead'. There is a lot of redundancy built in to NTFS, chiefly in the form of multiple copies of the MFT.

On large file enabled disk volumes, I've seen multiple copies of of the MFTs take 12% of available space.

Other journaled file systems, JFS/JFS2, EXT-whatever, zfs, etc, take a lot of space as well.

You can't really control this by playing around with sector/cluster sizing but you can easily make it worse.

Another place to look is at the beginning/end of your disk partition(s). Unless you are very careful when setting up partition sizes, there will generally be some leftover/unused/unusable space hiding back there. SSD users obsess about aligning their partitions on an even 1024/2048 boundaries and multiples. On conventional rotating disk this can be just as important; not from a performance POV but from an effective use of disk space POV.

 

+ Add the System restore points too to the vanished space.

 

8GB hibernation, 8GB pagefile, would account for that 16GB. I found that windows 7 without page file on the OS drive and hibernation disabled takes roughly 12GB so considering your win7 install is at 14GB (probably because of system restore), those would explain said 16GB.

 

Yeah, that's another space eater. But I am not going to mess with that.

 

I have already reactivated Hibernation. As I said, I just want to investigate where the Gb's have gone. And yes, page file is responsible for some of it.

 

So, if I add the space necessary for hibernation, page file, system restore and some other micsellaneous stuff, that explains the "missing" Gb's.
I wanted to investigate this because too often, people buying low capacity discs, (especially SSD's) or making small partitions to install Windows 7, overlook the extra space needed. I have heard of people considering buying a 40 Gb SSD as their OS disk. They could run into trouble. To install Windows 7 and a few programs, it seems that the strict minimum of SSD capacity should be a 64 gig drive.

 

my personal comfort level is 100GB+ for the system drive, that is assume I don't need to monkey around the User directory and overtime it would grow.

 

That, if you're willing to reduce page file size, system restore reserved space, disable hibernation and move your libraries, then 60GB is enough for a SSD, at least in my book.

100+GB will give you peace of mid and a lot less "tweaking" as far as OS drives go.

 

nevermind this post.

 

Given the huge swsetup I guess you didn't use a regular Windows ISO. That could have saved you some space.

Last time I checked, swsetup wasn't needed, you can have it on an external HDD or DVD, but Windows doesn't need to have it accessible 24/7.
I have my swsetup on a DVD, I used it once to find the SMBUS driver, that's it.

A 64-bit Windows clean install is about 10.5 GB, now I guess you have installed programs up to 4 GB like you say which caused the /installer and /winsxs to grow a bit, but I still think it sounds like a bit to much, the HP install/recover DVD is probably the reason.

Maybe you have some hidden recovery partition? Check Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Disk management.


Personally I'd never use HP's recovery DVD, especially not on a SSD where the amount of space is quite low.

 

I did a clean install from a DVD that I made using DigitalRiver's image. But you're right, SWSetup needs not be on the C drive. I could have left it out. I have it on a DVD, made from the previous installation, that I copied onto the C for faster access. I can delete it any time.
Based on this discussion, I still think that 64 gig is the minimum size SSD needed for an OS install, clean or dirty. Doing otherwise is looking for trouble.