Win XP takes more space on SATA than IDE

[Edge30]

Hello everybody, hoe someone could help me.
I installed Win XP SP2 on two PCs, one has a SATA drive partitioned as
C:10GB and D:60GB. The other one has an IDE HDD with the same partitioning.
I installed the system on C on both PCs.
In the one with the IDE drive almost 8GB are left as free space while in the
one with the SATA drive lestan 5GB are ledt (which are not enough for my
applicactions).
Can anybody tell me why may this happend? what am I doing wrong? how can I
solve this??

Regards
e,

 

[Admiral Q]

Did you format them both with the default cluster size of 4096? If you used
larger clusters on the SATA versus the IDE, this "may" account for the
difference.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Are the drives formatted as FAT32 or NTFS? Have the drives been compressed?

The figures for the system on the IDE drive look wrong. You are in effect
saying
that Windows XP is taking up 2 gb , which does not sound credible.

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.

How large is your hard drive? How much free space on each
drive / partition. To get this information whilst in Windows Explorer place
the cursor on each drive in turn, right click and select Properties.

FileSize -a useful tool for use with Windows Explorer when investigating how
disk space is being used.
http://markd.mvps.org/

The download link is not obvious. Click the here in the two sentences of the
web page accessed through the link above. "I can't count the number of times
someone has asked for this. So here is a module you can install that shows a
Folder Size column in Explorer."

--


Hope this helps.


Gerry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FCA


Using invalid email address


Stourport, Worcs, England
Enquire, plan and execute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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suggested solution worked for you.





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Edge30]

Thanks for your help.
Following your procedure I found the problem.
There two files pagefile.sys and hiberfi.sys these file are taking most of
the space.
I checked the web and found that both files are dependant on the size of the
RAM which is different in both PCs. The PC with IDe has 512MB while the
onewith the SATA has 1.5GB of RAM.
pagefile is calculated by windows by default as aprox. 1.5 times the RAM
size!!! so... for the SATA this is more than 2GB. Hiberfil.sys is the same
size as the RAM so another 1.5GB are used. So this two in total are more
than 3.5GB for the Pc with the SATA (1.5GB Ram) but only 1.1GB for the PC
with IDE (512MB Ram).
Now, for the solution.
I never use Hibernation, so I disble it and automatically recovered 1.5GB.
For the pagefile.sys, I read that "if you have enough RAM then you don't
need this feature". I guess 1.5GB is enough memory (or not??) so I disabled
it and deleted the pagefile.sys. This gave me back another 2 GB. In your
experience, may this be Ok?

Regards
e.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

It is not desirable to have no pagefile!
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

To increase you free space on your C select Start, All Programs,
Accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp, More Options, System Restore and
remove all but the latest System Restore points? Restore points can be quite
large.

You should use Disk CleanUp regularly to Empty your Recycle Bin and
Remove Temporary Internet Files. Whenever you remove redundant files you
should always run Disk Defragmenter by selecting Start, All Programs,
Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter.

It is likely that an allocation of 12% has been made to System Restore on
your C partition which is over generous. I would reduce it to 700 mb. Right
click your My Computer icon on the Desktop and select System Restore.
Place the cursor on your C drive select Settings but this time find the
slider and drag it to the left until it reads 700 mb and exit. When you get
to the
Settings screen click on Apply and OK and exit.

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Edge30]

That all was very helpful. My problem is solved now.
Thanks a lot for your help.
E.