XP home is eating my hd space

techguy

Hi Guys,

I have a 40gb hard drive in my inspiron but when i first started using it i only had around 25gb available to me?
Whats going on here...?
How can i reclai some of that space..

Thanks,
Hakko

kirving

Im no expert but i think its because system restore is set to use a high pecentage of your HD to back up your files, this can be reduced by going to "my computer", system properties, then reduciong the percentage to be used, by clicking the "system restore"tab

techguy

Do I even Need system restore? I just moved it to about 1.5gb for safety..
Now how do i delete all that stuff it has backed up to retrieve some space?
Thanks kev..

Hakko

Stephen

Since its a dell, it may also have a hidden partition on the disk containing a recovery image for use in the event of a disaster. If this is the case, you may or may not want to delete this, as you mightn't have any other option if you need to reinstall the operating system.

techguy

I am going to contact dell and demand cd's for all the software and hardware that came with my laptop. Then when I get them how do I delete this partition...fdisk?
I never had the luxury of this backup image and I dont mind not having it now...
Thanks..

techguy

I just contacted dell and it was a complete waste of time. I told them my problem and they told me to run diagnostics,they were sure there was a problem with the drive. They are also sending me o the os cd and driver cd.

I have also made the windows xp installation cd using the dell software.
Now I want to bakup my drivers for all the hardware. Will I just burn c:\drivers?

What I really want is windows xp without all the incorporated dell crap that takes up space. I want to have hard copies of everything I need to do a clean install..How Do i delete all the dell crap and have about 35gb available to me?

Thanks,
Hakko

techguy

Would you guys recommend getting rid of all the dell partitions and all the system restore stuff for more hd space.

Hakko

OMcGovern

Hi,

there's a couple of possible explanations for the disk use.

40Gb may be the unformatted size of the disk.
When you format it, it may reduce to say 35Gb.
I bought a 250Gb Hard disk ( unformatted size ), but when formatted it is reduced to 232Gb. (Win XP Pro on NTFS file system )

Windows uses some hard disk space as virtual memory / swap disk.
So, it may use say 512Mb - 1Gb. But you want to keep that.

You may find that some programs write excessive log files.
I have "PeerGuardian", a kind of firewall for Bittorrent programs.
It was writing a log file for every packet it received, even valid ones.
It used 2Gb in a couple of days. I had to turn off "Log allowed connections".

regards,
Owen

Capt'n Midnight

run spacemonger on the drive - it will show you where the space is being used anything else is just educated guesses.

The dell diags partition on a latitude is 47MB and removing it might upset the boot order so not worth doing. Not so sure on an inspiron - but do not delete the recovery images until you have backed them up.

techguy

I have it all sorted now. I deleted all but the backup (47mb) and the main one. I then reinstalled windows and had around 37GB available to me. I still had the system restore function that dell told me I would loose.
But, before I deleted anything I had recieved all the driver/OS cd's from dell in the post..

Hakko