HP "D" Drive content

[Bill Rueck]

I have seen this situation addressed on various news and help groups,
but have seen no answer to the questions.

I am running a HP Media Center PC loaded with Win XP. As far as I can
tell I have A drive used for floppy; C and D on one drive; E is the CD
burner; F is the cd player; G, H, I ,and J are used for various
removable storage devices; K is used for a Maxtor external drive used
strictly for back up. I recently noticed that my D drive is almost
full. The D drive is supposed to be used for system recovery.It may be
a coincidence but the C and D drives have the same used space [5.4
gb]. My C drive has 226gb available and the D drive has 989mb
available. I hadn't noticed this D drive usage previously. Can anyone
tell me if this is normal and if not, what can be the cause and
remedy? Thanks for looking! Bill

 

[bxf]

I have seen this situation addressed on various news and help groups,
but have seen no answer to the questions.

I am running a HP Media Center PC loaded with Win XP. As far as I can
tell I have A drive used for floppy; C and D on one drive; E is the CD
burner; F is the cd player; G, H, I ,and J are used for various
removable storage devices; K is used for a Maxtor external drive used
strictly for back up. I recently noticed that my D drive is almost
full. The D drive is supposed to be used for system recovery.

Which is why it would be almost full. There would be no point in
allocating more space than necessary in the recovery partition.

It may be
a coincidence but the C and D drives have the same used space [5.4
gb].

Well, if you haven't installed much stuff on your C drive, then it is
logical that the amount of space used in the recovery partition (D) is
not so different from the amount of space space used in the partition
it is meant to recover (C).

My C drive has 226gb available and the D drive has 989mb
available. I hadn't noticed this D drive usage previously. Can anyone
tell me if this is normal and if not, what can be the cause and
remedy? Thanks for looking! Bill

Manufacturers these days often set up the computer with a recovery
partition, whose function is to facilitate restoring the machine to its
initial factory state. What exactly is the problem?

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Bill

To investigate how you are using hard disk space you need to make sure
that you can see all files. Go to Start, Control Panel, Folder Options,
View, Advanced Settings and verify that the box before "Show hidden
files and folders" is checked and "Hide protected operating system files
" is unchecked. You may need to scroll down to see the second item. You
should also make certain that the box before "Hide extensions for known
file types" is not checked. Next in Windows Explorer make sure View,
Details is selected and then select View, Choose Details and check
before Name, Type, Total Size, and Free Space.

What is the capacity, used space and free space of your C and your D
partitions of your hard drive In Windows Explorer right click on each
and post the details? ( I imagine My C drive has 226gb available is
meant to be something different ). Also are the partitions formatted as
FAT32 or NTFS?

Next right click your My Computer icon on the Desktop and select System
Restore. Which drives are shown as Monitored and which as Turned Off?
Click on each drive shown as Monitored and then Settings. Post details
of disk usage -percentage and mb.

Do you have the Windows XP SP2 update installed?

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
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[billynash]

I have 226gb on my C partician and 6.0gb on my D partician. How can I
back up all of my C to my D?.I was under the impression that the D
partician was to be used for critical system recovery files and
personal files were to be backed up to a folder on the C partician or a
external storage device. My problem is; if the D partition is used for
a backup, what happens when it runs out of space? I will keep your
thoughts in mind as I persue this situation. Thanks, Bill

 

[billynash]

Gerry,

I have recorded the info as you suggested but I don't know if it's good
or bad If you have the time would you review my data to see if there is
a problem?

As far as I can see I have two Local Drives [0 and 5]. 0 drive is
divided into two particians, C & D. C has 53.6gb used and 172gb free. D
has 5.32gb used and 989mb free. 5 drive is the Maxtor external HD and
has 39.1gb used with 150gb free. Please note the similar used data on C
& D particians.

As far as System Restore readings:
C Monitoring 12% [27841mb] reserved for restore
D monitoring 12% [772mb] reserved for restore
K monitoring 12% [23336mb] reserved for restore

Win XP SP2 is installed.

I trust these figures mean something to you because I really don't know
what I'm looking at. I hope to hear from you soon. Thanks for the
interest. Bill

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Bill

The picture is now clearer. You have a very large hard drive!

"Please note the similar used data on C & D particians." Based on the
information provided by you this statement is not correct. The used
space is 10 times more on your C partition than your D partition. This
makes sense given that your D partition contains a restore copy of your
Windows XP operating system compared to the operating system, programmes
and data on your C partition.

The free space on your D partition is sufficient given that you should
not be adding any folders or files to the partition. It should only
contains a copy of the original copy of Windows XP when the computer was
purchased new. Was it purchased with the XP SP2 update already installed
or have you installed SP2 since purchase?

You should not have System Restore monitoring an external drive and
there is no point it monitoring the D ( restore ) partition. Turn it off
on these drives. Right click on your My computer icon on your Desktop
and select Properties, System Restore. Place the cursor on D drive,
click on Settings and check the box before "Turn off System Restore on
this drive" and return to the screen upon which Settings appears. Repeat
the process for your K drive. Next place the cursor on your C drive
select Settings but this time find the slider and drag it to the left
until it reads 4% and exit. When you get to the Settings screen click on
Apply and OK and exit. Finally run Disk CleanUp to remove Temporary
Internet Files and the Disk Defragmenter on your C drive.

These changes will leave System Restore monitoring system changes and
keeping sufficient Restore Points for use if you need to go back. The
12% default allocation is far too much for a large drive. You could use
less than 4% but you have plenty of free disk space so there's no need.

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
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Gerry,

I have recorded the info as you suggested but I don't know if it's
good
or bad If you have the time would you review my data to see if there
is
a problem?

As far as I can see I have two Local Drives [0 and 5]. 0 drive is
divided into two particians, C & D. C has 53.6gb used and 172gb free.
D
has 5.32gb used and 989mb free. 5 drive is the Maxtor external HD and
has 39.1gb used with 150gb free. Please note the similar used data on
C
& D particians.

As far as System Restore readings:
C Monitoring 12% [27841mb] reserved for restore
D monitoring 12% [772mb] reserved for restore
K monitoring 12% [23336mb] reserved for restore

Win XP SP2 is installed.

I trust these figures mean something to you because I really don't
know
what I'm looking at. I hope to hear from you soon. Thanks for the
interest. Bill

 

[billynash]

My sincere thanks to all who replied to my question. Apparently I did
not have a computer problem. Rather the trouble was between my ears - I
didn't notice a decimal point! I did learn a lot from the replies, so
it was helpful to me. I am sorry to waste your valuable time. I promise
to be more careful in the future.
Bill

 

[billynash]

Gerry,

Thanks for all your help on my nen-existant trouble. My machine came
with SP2 installed. When the computer crashed I had to reload from
scratch. In order to add SP2 I had to download it from MSN.

Bill

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Bill

Order a free Windows XP SP2 CD from Microsoft. It's useful having one
around as a safeguard ( it can be used on any computer that has Windows
XP installed ) and it's easier and safer to install from the CD than
downloading from the web.

It will take a few days to reach you by post but it should resolve your
problem be useful if you have further problems involving SP2.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/sp2/cdorder/en_us/default.mspx

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
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