Where has all the GBs gone?

W

Wendy Kelly Budd

Hi,
I'm trying to figure out how I managed to use up so much space on my hard
drive in just 9 months. I have a 120GB hdd, which converts to approx 111GB.
HP Recovery used 8.34 leaving me 103GB.

Out of 103GB, I currently have 30.8 free space. This is incredible that
I've used 72.2 GB in 9 months. My 7-year old desktop with XP has 80GB with
55GB free space.

Does Vista use this much space? If I right click on Windows, select
Properties, it calculates 12.7 GB. Is this a true number? If so, I've done
this for every folder and the large ones are Program Files 12.1 and my user
is 17.7GB. No other users. Pagefile.sys 3.1GB and hiberfil.sys 3.4GB. Many
other misc folders add up to 5.75 GB.

All these files add up to 55.15 GB. That leaves 17GB that I can't account
for. Where's that missing 17GB?
 
M

Mark L. Ferguson

You probably own some restore points with 'shadow copies' of files. Run Disk
Cleanup and delete all but the current restore point.
 
R

R. McCarty

System Restore points ? - The default allocation in % of volume size is
too high. System Restore is best used within a short period of time -
like a week to 10 days. Having Restore points past that point are not
reliable and generally a waste of space. You can manually adjust the
space allocation to a smaller %.
 
S

Stuart Sabatini

Vista uses up to 15% of your hard disc space for system restore points which
you don't see as files on your hard disc.

Stuart
 
P

PD43

Hi,
I'm trying to figure out how I managed to use up so much space on my hard
drive in just 9 months. I have a 120GB hdd, which converts to approx 111GB.
HP Recovery used 8.34 leaving me 103GB.

Out of 103GB, I currently have 30.8 free space. This is incredible that
I've used 72.2 GB in 9 months. My 7-year old desktop with XP has 80GB with
55GB free space.

Does Vista use this much space? If I right click on Windows, select
Properties, it calculates 12.7 GB. Is this a true number? If so, I've done
this for every folder and the large ones are Program Files 12.1 and my user
is 17.7GB. No other users. Pagefile.sys 3.1GB and hiberfil.sys 3.4GB. Many
other misc folders add up to 5.75 GB.

All these files add up to 55.15 GB. That leaves 17GB that I can't account
for. Where's that missing 17GB?
Click to expand...

By default, with a drive that size, 17 gigs are probably reserved (and
eventually used) for restore points. Vista uses HUGE amounts of space
for each restore point compared to XP.

Check the number of restore points you have on your system (if UAC is
on, make sure you check the box to show all older than 5 days).

You'll be surprised at how few there are.

Note that you can reduce that 17 gig amount, but you will also lose
restore point space by doing so.
 
M

Mick Murphy

XP used 12% of total Hard Drive space for System Restore.
Vista, by default, uses 15%.
There is not much difference!
 
N

Nonny

Mick Murphy said:
XP used 12% of total Hard Drive space for System Restore.
Vista, by default, uses 15%.
There is not much difference!
Click to expand...

Yes there is... it's in the size of the restore point. AND in the
ease of adjusting the amount of space reserved... or haven't you
noticed either of those?

In the words of an esteemed MVP:
 
C

Colin Barnhorst

Yes, my experience is that Vista uses that much hard drive space. System
Restore is not really the culprit nor is the NTFS filesystem data store.
Playing with SR is only of slight and temporary help. I know it is common
wisdom that SR is the culprit but that is because most folks can't think of
anything else. The truth is that there is no one thing.

For an example of places where your filespace is really going check out the
size of the winsxs folder in the System folder. That's just one example.
For a (vague) idea of what winsxs is for see:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374224.aspx
(Winsxs exists in XP also) After six months my Vista Ultimate x64 system
has a 6.57GB winsxs folder. The general consensus on the web is don't mess
with this stuff. Leave it alone.

All this levels off over time, however. It doesn't continue to grow and
grow and grow. My advice is, don't worry about it unless you are saving
incremental backups to the drive. That you should not do (but I doubt that
you are).
 
P

PD43

XP used 12% of total Hard Drive space for System Restore.
Click to expand...

And a user could reduce it to whatever amount desired by moving a
slider.
Vista, by default, uses 15%.
Click to expand...

And a user has to use the command line interface and know all the
cryptic commands to change it now.
There is not much difference!
Click to expand...

That's a huge difference...but wait, there's MORE!

Want to talk about the size of Vista's restore points compared to
XP's?

Another huge difference.

I used 3 gigs of space for XP's restore points and that would keep a
month's worth - or about 30 restore points.

I'm using 20 gigs with Vista... gets me 12 restore points.
 
P

PD43

Yes there is... it's in the size of the restore point. AND in the
ease of adjusting the amount of space reserved... or haven't you
noticed either of those?

In the words of an esteemed MVP:
Click to expand...

<snork>
 
N

Nonny

Colin Barnhorst said:
Yes, my experience is that Vista uses that much hard drive space. System
Restore is not really the culprit nor is the NTFS filesystem data store.
Playing with SR is only of slight and temporary help. I know it is common
wisdom that SR is the culprit but that is because most folks can't think of
anything else. The truth is that there is no one thing.
Click to expand...

Question: I clone my system drive to another internal drive weekly.
Immediately after the cloning, the amount of used space on each drive
is identical. Within an hour or so, the cloned drive used space
suddenly drops almost by 20gigs... why?

I haven't booted to that disk, but I bet that if I did, it would only
have a single restore point on it. Maybe it won't even have any.
 
W

wekebu

Mark L. Ferguson said:
You probably own some restore points with 'shadow copies' of files. Run Disk
Cleanup and delete all but the current restore point.
Click to expand...


Yes!!! I now have 44.7 GB free space AND about $$$ back in my pocket
because I don't need to purchase that new hdd.

Thank you!! I'm very grateful for the time and expert advise given from
everyone.

I can breathe again.
 
C

Colin Barnhorst

I have no idea. Assuming "cloned drive" means the original, it might be
deletion of temp files used during the backup process. But I would think
that the copy would be the smaller of the two due to compression. If it is
not an MS back up solution I guess I would ask that in a user forum provided
by the program's vendor. I have not noticed that effect.
 
N

Nonny

Colin Barnhorst said:
I have no idea. Assuming "cloned drive" means the original, it might be
deletion of temp files used during the backup process. But I would think
that the copy would be the smaller of the two due to compression. If it is
not an MS back up solution I guess I would ask that in a user forum provided
by the program's vendor. I have not noticed that effect.
Click to expand...

Cloned drive is not the original... it's the clone of the original,
using True Image, no exclusions. System drive fully cleaned prior to
the cloning.

I clone tonight... will boot to the cloned drive after removing my
system drive (don't want to lose restore points on that one, if that's
what's happening) which is on a removable tray.
 
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