Laptop hard drive usage query

searchlight123

hi all

acer aspire 5536 laptop running windows 7 home edition 32 bit. (upgraded from vista soon after purchase in 2010).

laptop has a 500GB hard drive and it is showing that i have used over 320GB of it.
i started adding up the obvious and i could find the following:
My documents - 23gb
Music - 70gb
Pictures - 53gb
Installed programs (not including OS) - 4gb

this all adds up to around 150gb so i am just wondering where the other 150gb has been used.
i understand the OS etc uses a fair bit, but 150gb?
is there a simple way of seeing exactly what has used what?
i have defragged the drive and run all the usual malware progs etc and run the windows disc clean up utility.

many thanks.

indesisiv

How much space are your Restore Points taking?

Esqui

http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/


This bit of software lets you hone in on what's taking up the largest space, I've found it quite useful

searchlight123

indesisiv - thanks for reply. how do i find out this info please?

esqui - thanks i will follow your link.

searchlight123

i have downloaded and run 'tree size free'
it's findings in a nutshell:
177gb - users
98gb - system volume info (not sure what this is)
24.5gb windows
6.7gb program files
7.2gb - $ windows. ~Q (have no idea what this is??)
5gb - (15 files) don't know what these are

so, is there any info there that suggests i can 'claim' back a large portion of my hard drive or is this pretty normal usage?

many thanks.

GunJack

follow this post:-
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=25746315&postcount=7

written for vista but virtually the same for W7

indesisiv

Open System by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, right-clicking Computer, and then clicking Properties.

In the left pane, click System protection. Administrator permission required If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

Under Protection Settings, click the disk, and then click Configure.

Under Disk Space Usage, it says what current usage is.

GunJack

p.s. in W7, instead of the More Options tab, you may have a Clean Up System Files button (depending on which version of & and how it was installed). If you do, click that instead

kwikbreaks

> 98gb - system volume info

Not 100% sure but I think this is where the restore points are saved.

To reclaim it you'd need to turn off system restore then turn it back on allowing whatever you feel is a reasonable %. You will obviously lose those back restore points but of course you can always do a full restore from your own backups if needs be. What no backups? Tch. Tch.

GunJack

kwikbreaks wrote: »

> 98gb - system volume info
Not 100% sure but I think this is where the restore points are saved.
yes it is

To reclaim it you'd need to turn off system restore then turn it back on allowing whatever you feel is a reasonable %. You will obviously lose those back restore points but of course you can always do a full restore from your own backups if needs be. What no backups? Tch. Tch.

this is why I always recommend just doing the cleanup I linked to earlier - it leaves the most recent restore point intact, just in case of anything

bod1467

Or use CCleaner - it offers lots of options, one of which is to delete specific system restore points.