Windows 7 Difference in space usage between W7 Home Premium & Ultimate

[cloggyjohn]

[Solved] Difference in space usage between W7 Home Premium & Ultimate

​Hi There,

Can somebody please explain why Windows 7 Home Premium ( on my laptop ) is taking up more space than the Ultimate version on my desktop ?
Both systems are installed, along with the application software, in the C partition of 30 GB with W7HP taking up nearly 4GB more then Ultimate.
I have more applications, taking up more space, under Ultimate.
Both systems have 2GB RAM, all System Restore points have been deleted, Hibernate is on and I have run both Disk Cleanup ( as Administrator )
and CCleaner to clear out any junk.
It’s no real problem but it is annoying me, I would have thought that the Ultimate version would take up more space.

Thanks for any info.

 

[davehc]

My guess would be that, as you know, only one of the OS's is responsible for the Boot manager and associated files. In you case, probably the home edition was installed last??, which would then be containing the boot manager and associated files.

 

[cloggyjohn]

Just to be clear, I only have W7 Home Premium on the laptop and only Ultimate on the desktop, no dual-booting.

 

[Nibiru2012]

If you have the "Hibernate" feature enabled on the notebook, then that's probably the difference in the size taken up. Normally that feature will take up about the same amount of space as equal to your installed RAM. Check that and see if that may be it.

 

[davehc]

Yes. I missed the first part, that they are on different computers. The Hibernate file would be the answer.

 

[cloggyjohn]

Hibernate is enabled on both systems and both have 2GB RAM so I don't think that's the problem.

 

[jackoab]

Coult it be that the laptop includes recovery files which are hidden?

 

[davehc]

Assuming you have "unhidden" all the folders and files in both machines, can you see if you have any extra folder in the laptop? jackoab's idea is worth looking at, but I don't think it would show as an addition to the size of the installation. I agree with your first post. It would certainly irritate me. 4Gbs is quite a greedy amount!
You could also have a look under disk management, to check if there is another , hidden, partition.

 

[cloggyjohn]

I don't think recovery file are the problem as I did a clean installation of W7 completely removing the pre-installed Vista and any recovery partitions.
Didn't think to 'unhide' files and folder though, will try that when I get home.

 

[jackoab]

As this is a is a new installation of Windows 7 Home how about Windows.Old folder taking up the extra space? it's a while since I installed Windows 7 but I seem to remember that it created this file which was quite large and I later deleted it.

 

[Trouble]

Are we comparing apples to apples? Are they both 32bit or 64 bit?
When you right click on the actual C:\Windows folder and choose properties, what is the relative size in gigabytes when you compare one with the other?

 

[cloggyjohn]

After putting the laptop and desktop side by side and comparing all folders under C:/Windows I eventually found the ( hidden ) cause - it was due to backups of Apple Mobile Sync, I assume from my wife and daughters iPhones. I deleted all but the most recent one ( 1.1 GB ) so now the differences in space usage are minimal. Thanks to all who replied.