Windows 7 Hard drive usage different in 2 places

[chrisandkel]

I installed Windows 7 Pro using an update package from Windows Vista Home.

My issue is this. If I right click my C: (Primary Partition) it says I have over 70 gigs of space used. If I go into the root of C: and "Select All" with Hidden and System files showing, I am just over 40 Gigs. Which is real and why are they showing differently?

I have run a Disk Clean-up, cleared about 500 MB.... and a Defrag, neither really impacted the size. The system is formatted using NTFS.

Any suggestions would be great as to what my problem is.

Thanks!

 

[reghakr]

Most all of us agree that an upgrade is not the route to take. It leaves useless files on your system and can cause conflicts.

Save all you Documents, Pictures, contacts, videos, music, etc to a flash drive,

Be aware, you will need to re-install your 3rd party applications.

There is a poll going on now and "clean" install is winning by a mile.
Most all of us agree that an upgrade is not the route to take. It leaves useless files on your system and can cause conflicts.

Save all you Documents, Pictures, contacts, videos, music, etc to a flash drive,

Be aware, you will need to re-install your 3rd party applications.

 

[ickymay]

I installed Windows 7 Pro using an update package from Windows Vista Home.

My issue is this. If I right click my C: (Primary Partition) it says I have over 70 gigs of space used. If I go into the root of C: and \\"Select All\\" with Hidden and System files showing, I am just over 40 Gigs. Which is real and why are they showing differently?

I have run a Disk Clean-up, cleared about 500 MB.... and a Defrag, neither really impacted the size. The system is formatted using NTFS.

Any suggestions would be great as to what my problem is.

Thanks!

windows reserves space for swop file, system restore and temp files although 30gig is a big difference

what size is your windows.old folder ?

a great tool I use for accurate drive use is WinDirStat

 

[chrisandkel]

windows reserves space for swop file, system restore and temp files although 30gig is a big difference

what size is your windows.old folder ?

a great tool I use for accurate drive use is WinDirStat

The windows.old folder has been deleted since before I noticed this. I have a second drive in the system that I moved all that suff to. Before I left for work this morning I was transfering my music/pictures/favorites/desktop to my secondary drive aswell. I am going to reload the system tonight and see if it still reads wrong... All I have to do not is figure out how to release the license for Office 2007.

I will update what I find.

 

[chrisandkel]

Ok, So maybe I am not doing this right.

Still says my C: is much larger than it should be. My Computer (or Computer in Windows 7) says "177 GB Free of 222 GB". That means there is still 45 GB used... somewhere. The properties of "C:\" (With Hidden and System files showing) says 13.8 GB. That number makes more sence to me. I have not put my pictures/songs back on the C: yet and will not till I figure this out.

Running the setup I chose the option to "Customize". I beleive that does somewhat a clean install by making the existing files go to C:\Windows.old. I have already deleted that file as well. I will load that WinDirStat tool but any advise as to what I may be doing wrong would be appreciated. Thanks so far!

 

[chrisandkel]

WinDirStat says there is 30 GB of unknown... How do I get to that or clear it off my computer? I cant imagine that my Hard drive is bad since I dont have any other problems.

 

[chrisandkel]

Found the answer to my own question. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, now to reinstall appications... fun....

Anyway, here it is.

Used WinDirStat to locate "lost" space. Shows as "Unknown". Did some searching online and found these steps to resolve.

Open your Command Prompt AS ADMINISTRATOR (Either browes to it and right click to select run as administrator or, I think in the "run" type cmd, im sure of the cmd, and press shift+enter, I could be wrong...).

Type the following command to view your system restore :

vssadmin list shadowstorage
This will list your System Restore space
You will see the following 3 important data
Used Shadow Copy Storage Space
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage Space
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage Space
This is where I saw the 30 GB used and Max was 33 GB.
The following command will let you chage that storage space
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=c: /on=c: /maxsize=350mb
You should be able to enter anything over 300MB but I was unable to make that work so I chose 350MB.

Now I have 210GB free of 222GB. I know odd number but Dell has some partitioned to their restore, which I may get rid of at some point.

Thanks Ickymay for the great app!

 

[reghakr]

WOW,

Never heard of that on before.,

Nice troubleshooting on your part

Good luck and thanks for posting back with the solution.

 

[ickymay]

Type the following command to view your system restore :

vssadmin list shadowstorage
This will list your System Restore space
You will see the following 3 important data
Used Shadow Copy Storage Space
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage Space
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage Space
This is where I saw the 30 GB used and Max was 33 GB.
The following command will let you chage that storage space
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=c: /on=c: /maxsize=350mb
You should be able to enter anything over 300MB but I was unable to make that work so I chose 350MB.

Now I have 210GB free of 222GB. I know odd number but Dell has some partitioned to their restore, which I may get rid of at some point.

Thanks Ickymay for the great app!

nicely found and glad that app helped

 

[kemical]

Found the answer to my own question. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, now to reinstall appications... fun....

Anyway, here it is.

Used WinDirStat to locate "lost" space. Shows as "Unknown". Did some searching online and found these steps to resolve.

Open your Command Prompt AS ADMINISTRATOR (Either browes to it and right click to select run as administrator or, I think in the "run" type cmd, im sure of the cmd, and press shift+enter, I could be wrong...).

Type the following command to view your system restore :

vssadmin list shadowstorage
This will list your System Restore space
You will see the following 3 important data
Used Shadow Copy Storage Space
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage Space
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage Space
This is where I saw the 30 GB used and Max was 33 GB.
The following command will let you chage that storage space
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=c: /on=c: /maxsize=350mb
You should be able to enter anything over 300MB but I was unable to make that work so I chose 350MB.

Now I have 210GB free of 222GB. I know odd number but Dell has some partitioned to their restore, which I may get rid of at some point.

Thanks Ickymay for the great app!

Hi,
the vssadmin trick to resize the shadow copy space is an old vista trick to resize the partition for shadow copy storage. Luckily for us 7 has a much easier way to resize the space. If you open 'system properties' and click on the 'system protection' tab you'll see a slider which changes the size (see screenshot).

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