I have just bought a HP computer with a 452 GB hard drive that was on December 03 2009 after installing about 45 GB of programs I have just checked my hard drive and its showing that I have used 116 GB
Is the missing GB being used by system restore which is set at 15% if not any idears please
i have contacted HP and thet told me that my drive is faulty and to send it back to HP to be looked at
Mick Nolan
The drive is not faulty at all - what a bunch of morons at HP. Suggest you do 2 things:
1. Run WinDirStat ( http://windirstat.info/ ) That will tell you what part is used by programs and data.
2. Open Command Prompt in elevated mode (go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > right click on Command Prompt > Run as administrator). Into the little black window type: VSSADMIN LIST SHADOWSTORAGE ----> for C: you will find 3 numbers ( used, allocated, maximum). It is "allocated" that system restore has currently grabbed. Maximum will be what it will ultimately grab (the 15%). - 15% of 452GB is 68GB alone.
Now make the math again.
Get SPACESNIFFER and run it. LOOK at the largest tiles and see where they are. Make sure UNKNOWN space is enabled to be shown too.
Math says you've got about 60GB's for system restore, probably 50GB's installed by HP, and you added 45GB's. You should have around 300GB's free.
How did you calculate the amount you added might I ask? Some programs greatly expand and create datasets once run.
If you have PAGEFILE and HIBERNATE enabled, they can add up to 3 or 4 time the amount of RAM you have too. Add in 'normal' temporary files and you can hit another 20GB's easily.
Anyway, post back the largest files SPACESNIFFER finds please.
Irv S.
thanks for saying that the drive was not faulty
I copied and pasted VSSADMIN LIST SHADOWSTORAGE ----> for C: but nothing happened
I even ran spacesniffer and that showed 65.3 GB unknown
Larges file on space sniffer was Windows 14 GB
Double clicked my computer
Double clicked hard drive
Highlighted everything showing
Right click properties
That will give size being used
That’s the way I did it ??????????
I was not sure how to answer both your questions
Mick Nolan
So I don't understand the problem?
Disk size -- 450GB's approximately...
Sys Restore --- 65GB's
Free Space -- 334Gb's.
add those last two and subtract if from the size, 50GB's used... that meshes with you stating adding 45GB's and 116GB's used, the 45GB's and 65GB's for system restore.
Did I miss something?
Do a DIR /S from the C:\ root and look at the last few lines. Should show only the file count and size and free space. Those should add up correctly.
Irv S.
You were only supposed to type VSSADMIN LIST SHADOWSTORAGE into the elevated command prompt and then hit Enter. Sorry for confusing you with the ---->C: That was supposed to mean "Look for C:" when the results come up because you could have more than 1 partition on your disk and you get a result for each partition.
Allocated shadow copy storage space 67.813 GB 15%
missing GB being used by system restore which is set at 15% I found this on the internet but I still wasent sure that is why I put the question on the forum
and its the first time I have done this sort of thing
once again thanks to both of you for the helpfull advice
Mick Nolan
Glad you could get the numbers straight. This is a very common question that comes up all the time. Many people are not aware of the shadowstorage. What you can do if you need some of those 67GBs (which is really a lot of shadowstorage - good for about 70 restore points), you can reduce the shadowstorage to e.g. 20GBs. Paste this into elevated command prompt: Vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=20GB Then hit Enter.
Be aware though that this will erase all your current shadows - but you will get some soon again.
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