Losing my memory, HDD memory that is...

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Slick Rick

Slick Rick

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I bought a new laptop last thursday :D. It came with a 250gig hdd but in reality I think its about 220. Once vista and all the applications were up and running there was about 200gig left. After that I copied all my relevant documents and stuff onto it which bought the memory down to 188gig.
On Sunday I saw the HDD on my computer and it had dropped down to 180 :S but i didnt think too much of it. On monday night I glanced again after a days uni work on it and it said 174gig! Last night again after a full days work it said the HDD had 163gig left?!

WTH is going on with the laptop and where is all the space going. Apart from Friday where I copied a large amount of stuff nothing else even comes near to account for a loss of 20gig. The most I must have downloaded in the space of sat-mon is probably 2gig at the most.

1 more thing, unrelated to the above, even though I tick the remember box, firefox doesnt remember my passwords on forums, I dont know why.....

Heres some details on the laptop btw:
http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/sto...null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=052738&category_oid=
 
I have never used Windows Vista, but I've seen exactly that problem in Windows XP so the answer to that case may help you: the problem might be the point recovery system, or whatever it's called on english. On Windows XP, there's an option that if enabled, will be getting GBs and more GBs from time to time in order to save those recovery points. You can limit the amount of GBs you leave for those recovery points, but lets say than there's an option which gives the whole HDD so with the time you'll experience a loss in your HDD space.

I don't know if in Windows Vista this is possible too, but give it a try and check if you have a limited space for those recovery points, if they exist on Windows Vista.

For your Mozilla Firefox problem, go to the options panel, then to the security tab, and check you've enabled the field which says to remember your passwords. Sometimes you don't need to mark the remember/login on the forums, just have marked that field on the options/security panel so every time you enter a new user/password a new yellow panel will appear above the site and on that panel is where you'll have to select if you want it saved or not for that site.

Hope this helps, excuse the english.
 
Also, with regards to the original size of HDDs, manufacturers report the size in Gigabytes (1,000,000,000 bytes - or 1,000 x 1,000, x 1,000) but the computer reads things in Gibibytes (1,073,741,824 bytes or 1,024 x 1,024 x 1,024).

The upshot is that a 250"Gb" hard drive only has 233"Gb" of space.
 
Yeah, recovery points depending on the manufacturer can be ridiculously frequenent from the factory. I once saw a laptop that did it 4 times a day and allocated 25GB to it. I think it actually says in Vista that System Restore can use up to (or around) 15% of the space on the disk. Personally I don't bother with Restore Points at all, though I have used them for other people quite a number of times so they're not without their use, but it's more efficient if you've got another drive to just run a ghost image of your computer now and then, or do what I do, and just chuck my documents on a DVD every so often.

To clear all but the most recent restore point, Right Click on the Drive>Properties>Disk Clean Up>More Options>System Restore And Shadow Copies> Clean Up...

If you've got a bit of RAM then Page Files can take up a fair amount of space too, also if you're a serious interest browser you'd probably be surprised how much and fast your temporary files can fill up too.

And if you hibernate your computer it takes up HardDrive space too...
 
^^^ what he said... exaclty what I wanted to say... I discovered this problem just recently as well.. :lol:
 
Thanks for the help guys. Is there any way to change the settings on vista to limit amount of space how many times it makes a restore point. I tried looking but all I could find and going by what Casio has said is to wipe all but the most recent restore point which id rather not do yet....
 
I don't have access to a Vista at the moment so I could be wrong. But if in the little Search Bar in the Start Menu you type "Task Scheduler". Then Open the System Restore Folder in the Windows Tab, then you can choose how often it happens, somewhere in there.

To change how much harddrive space Vista allows system restore go into command prompt (you may have to run as administrator) and type:

"vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /Maxsize=XGB"

Where the 'C's are your respective drives, and Maxsize (X) whatever you want it too be.
 

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