Hard Drive Space

[leethepee]

Hi,

I have a VGN-FZ18M Sony Vaio. When I bough it, its came with a 160 hard drive. With Vista installed I now have 139 left.

My question is, I have taken 3.5 GB worth in Music and 2.3 GB worth on photos. In terms of programs, I must be taken at most 4 GB. Why am I only left with 90 GB. If you sum up what I am taken with programs, music and photos it come to about 10 GB's.

Space left = 139 - 10 GB (programs, music etc) = 129. I have only 90 (39 GB missing??). What is taken up the remaining 39 GB's?

This would be most helpful if anyone can help.

Thanks

Lee

[Thalamus.]

Hi leethepee

The difference in hard drive size is partly due to the different way manufactures and Microsoft report the sizes..

Manufacturers use the SI scale for example 1KB = 1000 bytes

Microsoft, ie windows XP/Vista, use the binary, for example 1KB = 1024 bytes

Therefore manufactures 160 GB hard drive = 160,000,000,000 bytes.

Whereas MS 160 GB hard drive = 149 GB

example 160GB manufactures size converted to MS binary scale...

160Gb = 160,000,000,000

/1024 = 156250000 kilobytes
/1024 = 152588 megabytes
/1024 = 149 Gigabytes

Also you have a hidden recovery partition, which is probably 9.6 GB


You may be able to reclaim some space by following the tips in this thread: HERE

[leethepee]

I understand the differences between how folk measure HD sizes thanks. I am still unsure however what is taken up this 39 GBs as it doesn't seem to relate to files, music and photos.

I do have a hidden partition, what is this used for and if I took this into consideration that would mean I have 29 GBs unaccounted for?

Please help

[Thalamus.]

You may be able to reclaim some space by following the tips in this thread: HERE

Did any of the tips in the link I provided help you to recover HDD space.?

[leethepee]

thanks mate, it worked a treat.

[Thalamus.]

Excellent..

[leethepee]

is there anyway that you can cap the amount of space the pc takes for system restores? If I could work that out I would probably decrease it to be honest.

[Thalamus.]

Hi leethepee.

You can decrease the Storage Space allocated to system restore, make sure you read the text before you actually reduce the allocated space, click the following link for a guide: Decrease Storage Space Allocated To System Restore