What is taking up all this room on my new lap top?

What is taking up all this room on my new lap top?

Author
Discussion

King Herald

Original Poster:

23,501 posts

216 months

Sunday 10th February 2008
quotequote all
I just bought a new HP Pavilion dv6700 'note book', in the US, and I've loaded about 24 gig of photos and music on it, but when I look at the 'Computer' info it tells me I have 73 gig left of 137 gig available, C drive. Also tells me the Restore drive, D, has 1.3 gig of 12 gig left.


Shirley Vista and the HP junk don't take up 50 or so gig of space??

It said on the box it is a 180gig hard drive too, but I can see nothing on the 'puter now that tells me 180 of anything, but appears to be about 150.

sstein

6,249 posts

254 months

Sunday 10th February 2008
quotequote all
King Herald said:
I just bought a new HP Pavilion dv6700 'note book', in the US, and I've loaded about 24 gig of photos and music on it, but when I look at the 'Computer' info it tells me I have 73 gig left of 137 gig available, C drive. Also tells me the Restore drive, D, has 1.3 gig of 12 gig left.


Shirley Vista and the HP junk don't take up 50 or so gig of space??

It said on the box it is a 180gig hard drive too, but I can see nothing on the 'puter now that tells me 180 of anything, but appears to be about 150.
Off the shelf PCs do have a lot of junk installed on them, and the OS is very bloated, BUT it shouldn't be taking up that much room!

Try downloading seqouiaview, that will show you graphically where the disk space is being used up smile

-

Stuart

King Herald

Original Poster:

23,501 posts

216 months

Sunday 10th February 2008
quotequote all
sstein said:
King Herald said:
I just bought a new HP Pavilion dv6700 'note book', in the US, and I've loaded about 24 gig of photos and music on it, but when I look at the 'Computer' info it tells me I have 73 gig left of 137 gig available, C drive. Also tells me the Restore drive, D, has 1.3 gig of 12 gig left.


Shirley Vista and the HP junk don't take up 50 or so gig of space??

It said on the box it is a 180gig hard drive too, but I can see nothing on the 'puter now that tells me 180 of anything, but appears to be about 150.
Off the shelf PCs do have a lot of junk installed on them, and the OS is very bloated, BUT it shouldn't be taking up that much room!

Try downloading seqouiaview, that will show you graphically where the disk space is being used up smile

-

Stuart
I just tried it, very interesting program. It looks like I have hogged maybe 60% of the taken space, and all the various other systems and such use correspondingly smaller bits and pieces. Like you say, all sorts of space hogging junk in there, most of which I have no ideas of its functions. It does no harm at the moment, but it might need culling at some stage when I get to know more about the setup. Thanks for the info Stuart.

Hooli

32,278 posts

200 months

Sunday 10th February 2008
quotequote all
you were asking about drive sizes. the size on the box is often larger than the one installed. becuase 1MB is 1024KB but for lazyness they calculate drives with 1000KB. doesnt normally happen with larger discs for some reason as they appear to have remembered this fact when working in GB (which = 1024MB).

pies

13,116 posts

256 months

Sunday 10th February 2008
quotequote all
system restore

King Herald

Original Poster:

23,501 posts

216 months

Sunday 10th February 2008
quotequote all
Hooli said:
you were asking about drive sizes. the size on the box is often larger than the one installed. becuase 1MB is 1024KB but for lazyness they calculate drives with 1000KB. doesnt normally happen with larger discs for some reason as they appear to have remembered this fact when working in GB (which = 1024MB).
That would explain some of it away i guess, but not a lot.
I can find nowhere in the literature that actually mentions the supposed 180 gig HD, but it was definitely on the box when I bought it, unfortunately that box is now stuffed in the rubbish at some heliport in New Orleans.....


pies said:
system restore
I've only had it three weeks. yikes
Oh, you mean the size of it. hehe Yes, it takes up 11 gig, but that is calculated into the space taken already and still leaving me puzzled.

pies

13,116 posts

256 months

Sunday 10th February 2008
quotequote all
No not drive D,every time you add remove or modify a prog system restore creates a new restore point.

Edited by pies on Sunday 10th February 19:50

robwales

1,427 posts

210 months

Monday 11th February 2008
quotequote all
System restore as was said - do disk cleanup then select the 3rd tab and clear all but the most recent point. Also it may have a hidden partition containing recovery software i.e. a copy of Windows and all the junk. You might be able to burn that to DVD and recover the space it's taking up.

Silent1

19,761 posts

235 months

Monday 11th February 2008
quotequote all
Hooli said:
you were asking about drive sizes. the size on the box is often larger than the one installed. becuase 1MB is 1024KB but for lazyness they calculate drives with 1000KB. doesnt normally happen with larger discs for some reason as they appear to have remembered this fact when working in GB (which = 1024MB).
Not quite, there's a mathematical formula that gives the maximum space for each disk, this is used when calculating their size, in reality because of the formatting system it can be 10% smaller than you expect

King Herald

Original Poster:

23,501 posts

216 months

Monday 11th February 2008
quotequote all
pies said:
No not drive D,every time you add remove or modify a prog system restore creates a new restore point.
Yes, Windows creates Restore points, as well as the HP setup having its own Restore drive. It's barely three weeks old, so I hope it hasn't taken that much room up with saved restore points already yikes

FlossyThePig

4,083 posts

243 months

Monday 11th February 2008
quotequote all
Silent1 said:
Hooli said:
you were asking about drive sizes. the size on the box is often larger than the one installed. becuase 1MB is 1024KB but for lazyness they calculate drives with 1000KB. doesnt normally happen with larger discs for some reason as they appear to have remembered this fact when working in GB (which = 1024MB).
Not quite, there's a mathematical formula that gives the maximum space for each disk, this is used when calculating their size, in reality because of the formatting system it can be 10% smaller than you expect
Nearly there but not quite.

The SI unit kilo is 10^3 (1000) and Mega is 10^6 (1000000)
Computer terminology kilo is 2^10 (1024) and Mega is 2^20 (1048576)

Marketing people like to use SI units because it makes the drives appear to be bigger.