Vista - Missing 20GB of free space?

[On the Lam]

I have a Dell laptop Inspiron 1501 with Vista Basic and a 80GB hard drive (C: is 24GB of 64.4GB free and D: (Recovery) is 6.32GB free of 9.99GB)

However, any method I use of analyzing how much space is used on C: (eg windirstat, treesize, ctrl+a on all files in C: ) shows that only 22GB is being used, leaving almost 20GB unaccounted for.

Where is my space??

Facts:

I limited/resized shadow storage to 2gb with the command "vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /for=C: /maxsize=2GB"

Laptop came pre-loaded with Vista - I blew it away and had winxp on it for a few months, then yesterday I upgraded to 2gb and decided to restore Vista via the Recovery D: partition

Screenshots:

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p155/onthelam/vistamissingspace.jpg

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p155/onthelam/treesizemissing-2.jpg

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p155/onthelam/windirstatmissing.jpg

[bbz_Ghost]

The amazing thing here is that this guy:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1244719

seems to have almost the exact same issue. He said, as stated in the thread I just linked to, his OS was using roughly 45GB of space he couldn't quite account for, but he figured it out later on: once he disabled System Restore for a short period of time, "magically" the space consumption dropped literally over half.

He chewed me out for posting that Vista doesn't actually require that kind of space by itself but that a lot of extra software - what happens with OEM installations more often than not - causes a ton of extra system restore points to be created. A single restore point is one thing, but every time an application is installed or some major change is done to Vista, it'll fire off a system restore point and those can add up to become a significant chunk of hard drive space.

My suggestion:

Disable System Restore for a few minutes. Check the space consumption on that drive after a few minutes (not instantly, give Vista a few minutes to settle down now that it won't need to constantly be ready to make a restore point) and then take a peek. See if anything on the space usage front is changed.

If so, there ya go.

If, however, you disable System Restore and nothing changes (unlikely but, hell, who knows), then something is seriously "up" with that box.

Oh, one more thing: make sure you remember to turn it back on. System Restore in Vista is way way better than it was in XP, but even so, it's a real space hog with a lot of system alterations. Still, it's useful and can someday save your ass when you least expect it.

[TechieSooner]

Oh, one more thing: make sure you remember to turn it back on. System Restore in Vista is way way better than it was in XP, but even so, it's a real space hog with a lot of system alterations. Still, it's useful and can someday save your ass when you least expect it.

I'm just saying this because no doubt someone else will... System Restore can also restore viruses that were included in the restore point.

I personally leave it on. You install some "iffy" software (I've done it once on my machine) that doesn't act right, just roll it back. It's also great for messing with a ton of settings- just create a restore point before you start.

As long as your machine isn't a freaking harbor for spyware and viruses (most folks on here know enough to keep their machines clean), not much to worry about.
Plus, if you know about a virus in a restore point... you know right were it is and can nuke it again if need be.

See this page about customizing it a bit more... http://www.winvistaclub.com/t2.html

[Slade]

Most manufacturers use the "missing space" to keep an image of the install of exactly the way you bought it. If you've ever been observant during the post, you may notice a hit f11 key or something off a normal bios entry key that says "hit f11 to start recovery utility".

So when you've really f-ed it up... you can always go back to the way it was when you first bought it.

[Cele-CT]

Check system restore ... or delete points on there, I freed up nearly 12 gigs when I cleaned my system restore points out.

[On the Lam]

Thank you everyone for your advice - but I think I will have to reformat to regain my lost/missing space...

I had win xp on here previously, then restored the factory.wim image from the D: Recovery partition, without formatting C: - so my guess is that whatever space was taken up before is now inaccessible.

I turned off system restore - no change, so I assume the missing space isn't there. It was a good idea to turn it off for longer than just a moment - it's been off since this morning (6 hours ago) but no change...

The way Vista handles Permissions - I'm going to assume since I didn't reformat, a portion of the disk isn't visible to me because it belongs to an older 'Permission.'

[bbz_Ghost]

If you turned off System Restore and you saw no change whatsoever in the amount of free space on the drive, I'd say something else is wrong. Disabling System Restore at any given moment should instantly reflect some change in the available free space on any drive that it was previously enabled on the moment before you turned it off.

When System Restore is enabled, it makes a restore point right at that moment too, sooo... if you turn it on and notice a bit disappear, then immediately turn it off again, you should note some change - if not, there's another issue happening that I'm not familiar with.

Weird... but good luck, regardless.

[On the Lam]

Thanks - I've gone ahead and formatted C: then performed the system restore - got my 20gb back!

[rgratto2]

After reading this thread I cleared out my system restore points, and got back ~exactly 2 gig!

[Cele-CT]

I went and did mine after seeing this post which I cleaned it a few days before and gained 1.4gigs ...

[Grentz]

Run disk cleanup on the drive (right click on the drive in Computer --> Properties -- > Disk Cleanup) and you can get rid of excess system restore points, hibernation files, and other things that take up a lot of space over time.

[Lucio]

Or you could just Google the filename and find out that it's just a copy of your XP system prior to installing Vista.

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/28939510/-bootsectbak.aspx

Just delete the file, if you don't have the permissions to do so, try doing it via Safe Mode, or if that doesn't work, via a Linux CD.

[MrGuvernment]

superfetch takes up room.

[Finn]

Vista sucks.

[On the Lam]

Or you could just Google the filename and find out that it's just a copy of your XP system prior to installing Vista.

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/28939510/-bootsectbak.aspx

Just delete the file, if you don't have the permissions to do so, try doing it via Safe Mode, or if that doesn't work, via a Linux CD.

Hey, you were probably right - I was thinking that it was some prior install that was taking up space, but I couldn't find it - probably because I didn't have permissions, therefore couldn't 'see' it. Wait, so are you saying that this bootsect.bak was 20gb?

Anyways I had already reformatted - since the install was only a day old and I wanted to deal with it sooner rather than later.

Imagine if we all collectively cleared out our system restore points, and even reduced the space it takes up (I reduced mine to 2gb max) - a lot of freed up hard drive space!

[TechieSooner]

I just ran disk cleanup on my machine... 16GB freed up ;)

[Frosteh]

System restore hides space, it doesn't count as used space but isn't available either. (afaik)

Other uses are pagefile which is roughly 1.5x amount of system RAM, and the hibernate (hiberfil.sys) file which filled the contents of your RAM when you hibernate, altough I believe these files do appear as used space rather than simply disappearing. If you're running large amounts of RAM like 4Gb then thats 6gb for pagefile + 4 for hibernation, so thats 10Gb gone bye bye before you talk about actual OS files, and backup of those files.