HDD free space appears to be decreasing?

I own a FZ160 and my Local Disk ( C: ) has 179GB of total space. I vividly remember seeing 141GB of free space just two days ago and I have not installed any applications, but now it shows 134GB of free space. Why is this? I have uninstalled quite a few of the VAIO software in the past two days and thats about all I have done.

I know there is still so much free space but I am concerned to where 7GB just randomly went. I changed the Virtual Memory settings from the recommended 3055MB memory to about 4GB but its only on one drive, my C drive.

Where is this space going?

 

Much disscusion on this do a search to get the best answer. Vista eats space when still early on to back up and I think try and customize the Vista experience for you.

 

I dont quite understand your post. Vista eats space when still early on? Early on what? I've uninstalled every application I decide I will not use and so right now nearly every application in the list of programs is one that I use quite often.

Right now it reads 134GB of 179GB free.

 

Well I just was looking at Diskeeper and in analyzing my C drive I also noticed that it recognized my recovery drive, which is 9GB. I think this answers my question of the missing HDD space. That means I've got over 140GB free space.

But now this brings me to a different question. Why doesnt Explorer show my Recovery Drive? I have seen it on my friend's Dell Inspiron 1520. Is there some way to make it visible in the Explorer window?

 

Your space loss is caused by the system restore function of Vista. As far as I remember it will use up to 15% of your hard drive to frequently make images of your system after changes (i.e. windows updates, drivers, installation/uninstallation, etc).

 

I value System Restore but is there a way to reduce the amount of space it will use?

 

http://bertk.mvps.org/html/diskspacev.html
That should do it

 

Yes.

See this link:

http://keznews.com/2748_How_To__Reduce_Disk_Space_Used_By_Windows_Vista_System_Restore

There are many other sites informing about the same thing.

 

Thanks JabbaJabba.

I ran the command and it shows that I have 25.752GB of used shadow copy storage space, while 26.741GB is the allocated shadow copy storage space. 30GB is the max amount of space allowed. Thats a lot of space for shadow storage...

How much should I be allocating? In the article, the example given shows a mere 2GB.

 

I just tried to set 2GB parameters for shadow storage and it tells me the value is incorrect.
Error: A required suffix is missing
"MaxSizeSpecs is to be represented in bytes", even though i supplied a correct suffix at 2GB ?
What should I try now?

 

I would try increasing the size of it then. Initially when I just typed in "vssadmin list shadowstorage"...it showed that my max is 30GB. I decreased that size a few times, and now keep it at 10GB, although I think even that may be too big, given that the actual shadow storage it shows for me is under 6GB.

In the article it shows the example to be 2GB, but that might be for Windows XP.

Has anyone resized this feature and what is a good amount of space to allocate for it?

 

I think 6-10gb range is sufficient. I have mine set at 7.

 

Thanks so much to everyone for this information. Mine is now resized at 6GB. Anything but 30! Have a good evening!

 

I'm planing to get my computer soon with vista, should I do this when I first get my computer?

Does it store every file on the recovery drive? So this method from this site work perfectl.

Works perfectly right
and 6-7 gig should be fine.