Please help me, I'm missing hard drive space... I can't figure it out.

[jb.jones]

I am missing a bit over a gig of space on my hard drive. I know about the different sized of gigs (in reality and when marketing) and it is not that.

I have a 15 gig hard drive and at recently had 5 gigs of space left. Just recently I looked and noticed that I had 4 gig left. I did not install anything, my temp is cleaned out, I have reset my system restore, and I have no internet files.

I am running XP

Recently I did two things: I added 1 gig of ram (I currently have no page file, so it isn't there) and currently have 1.5 gig of ram, and I also upgraded my DVD firmware (with official Sony firmware).

My computer is a laptop, with 512 ram, and a partitioned harddrive with 15/13.0 gig and 45/41.9 gig of space.


I don't need the space, but it is puzzling me and I can't figure it out. Can anyone make sense of this?

Thanks!

 

[jb.jones]

Update... It turns out that this is due to my RAM installation of 1 gig, when I put it in, It says that an extra gig of hard drive space is in use (the total is the same though). This is really weird, can anyone make sense of it? If I remove the RAM I have access to the Gig again. Anyone?

 

[Me__2001]

i think its to do with your page file, the page file is usually about twice the size of the amount of RAM, so adding 1GB of RAM will increase the Page file size

 

[KGB-911]

Update... It turns out that this is due to my RAM installation of 1 gig, when I put it in, It says that an extra gig of hard drive space is in use (the total is the same though). This is really weird, can anyone make sense of it? If I remove the RAM I have access to the Gig again. Anyone?

Anyway, you should always balance RAM. Laptops only have 2 RAM slots - you should not have 512MB in one and a gig in another. It should either me 512 & 512 or 1gig & 1gig

KGB

 

[jb.jones]

Would I just be better having one stick of ram then (the 1 gig one)? I just kept the other 512 because it came with the computer.

I'd rather not have to buy another Gig (I have to import).

Thanks

 

[jb.jones]

I figured it out. It is reserved for the hibernation file. The hubernation file reserves space so everything in memory can be stored (in this situation adding another gig of ram removed a gig of hard drive space available). Anyway here is the key to my puzzle. Did anyone else know about the hibernation file taking up this much space?

 

[Raje]

To be honest no, but it does make sense. Your hibernain file is all info stored to your ramm before shut down, I assume that when you increase teh ammount of ramm you increase teh hiberanation file as well becasue you have more info that can be stored in hibernate. It sounds like your system writes a packet to the hardrive when it hibernates, then when its awoken, retrives the packet and opens your desk top to the state it was in when you closed.