[HELP] I have about 50 gigs unaccounted for on my C drive???

[Kramerican]

My local disk C shows I have 156 gigs used of 177 gigs total (156/177 used). When I open the drive and check the space of each folder, It only adds up to be about 100 gigs of used space. I opted to show hidden folders, and that only added a few megs of data. Where is the extra 50 gigs of used space??? I'd like to add more media, so it'd be helpful to know what's going on. Thanks

[AMD_Gamer]

windows vista right?

it's the restore point ,the restore point wich can take up 15% of your HD space if you want to turn it off just right click my computer , properties, advanced system settings, system protection and then uncheck your C drive

you can download and use a great program called WinDirStat to see a visualization of what uses up your HD space

[Kramerican]

windows vista right?

it's the restore point ,the restore point wich can take up 15% of your HD space if you want to turn it off just right click my computer , properties, advanced system settings, system protection and then uncheck your C drive

you can download and use a great program called WinDirStat to see a visualization of what uses up your HD space

Well I have a separate drive/partion labeled "HP Recovery". Isn't that the restore point? Also, don't I need the restore point?

Edit: I downloaded WinDirStat. Where can I see the folder that contains the restore point? I want to make sure that is the unidentified space.

Update: WinDirStat only recognises 129 gigs on C. Windows explorer recognises 156.

[devil22]

This command:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=c: /for=c: /maxsize=15GB

will make the restore points, etc. only use 15GBs, you can make it smaller or larger by changing the number in front of GB. Recently my vista was using 177GBs and I changed it to 25 max and got lots of disk space back. Alternatively, as sugguested, you might want to turn it off completely. But restore points are useful at times, better to have a small restore cache than none at all.

[Joe Average]

This increased drive usage can also be related to the WinSxS folder (don't mess with it, I'm just pointing out what could be another "cause"). That's where Vista stores pretty much everything related to drivers and changes to system files so it can almost always "roll back" if necessary. If you do a lot of system tweaking, driver updates, etc, this folder can grow quite large and people tend to misdiagnose where the "lost" space is going.

But again, WinSxS is a system folder, with protected contents for the most part, so don't go-a-tamperin' lest you could find yourself with a truly dead boxen.

[r00k]

Furthermore, you may want to see what language packs were installed. First time i had Vista, i decided to add every update available, including language packs, and theyre freaking ginormous.


Also, check out this (http://windirstat.info/) nifty little freeware utility. It is called WinDirStat, and it really saves time identifying where your space is being taken up.

[Mithent]

Note that Vista restore points are much larger than XP ones - 15GB will store perhaps 5 Vista restore points, which are several gigabytes versus 50MB or so in XP. This is because they keep more data, and are also used for Previous Versions on Vista Ultimate.

I don't think that programs like WinDirStat will be able to see inside System Volume Information normally; even with administrator access I'm denied access to it. Instead, you can see how much it's using by launching a command prompt as administrator and typing:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

(Incidentally, I prefer SpaceMonger to WinDirStat: http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/v1x.php )

[ghostchamber]

Well I have a separate drive/partion labeled "HP Recovery". Isn't that the restore point? Also, don't I need the restore point?
Is this for a laptop? Because that would be the recovery partition. Restore points help roll back changes for borked driver installations and other things like that. A recovery partition is just like a restore disk.

[DeaconFrost]

Is this for a laptop? Because that would be the recovery partition.
That recovery partition can be present on laptops and desktop systems. Assuming the OP burned the recovery discs, this partition can be blown away for more space.

[Azhar]

Well I have a separate drive/partion labeled "HP Recovery". Isn't that the restore point? Also, don't I need the restore point?

Edit: I downloaded WinDirStat. Where can I see the folder that contains the restore point? I want to make sure that is the unidentified space.

Update: WinDirStat only recognises 129 gigs on C. Windows explorer recognises 156.

HP Recovery is your recovery disk in the instance your computer was to fail and need to be repaired or rolled back to factory default. I would leave that alone if I were you unless you burned not one, but two copies of the recovery disk and keep them in a safe place.

ALL HP computers have that since XP was launched (that is, all default HP computers do unless the user reclaimed the partition).

[Kramerican]

HP Recovery is your recovery disk in the instance your computer was to fail and need to be repaired or rolled back to factory default. I would leave that alone if I were you unless you burned not one, but two copies of the recovery disk and keep them in a safe place.

ALL HP computers have that since XP was launched (that is, all default HP computers do unless the user reclaimed the partition).

Yea, i did end up making a recovery disk.

[Azhar]

Yea, i did end up making a recovery disk.

Then you won't need that recovery partition. You can reclaim the space using virtually any partitioning software. Personally I would leave that partition alone as it's always good to have extra backups, not to mention it makes reinstalling speedy running off the harddrive.

When you boot up your computer, you'll see "Press F11 to Run Recovery" before the Windows splash screen, that's what accesses and runs that HP Recovery partition.