Vista showing 70Gb used

B

Blaketon

New Member
Help,

I am running a Dell with 288Gb on the hard drive. Currently Vista is showing 70Gb used whereas I can only account for a max of 20Gb and most of that appears to be used by Windows itself. Anyone know why this might be?

I have reasonable experience with pc's and regularly clear out temps etc but cannot find this missing space.

Blaketon
 

My Computer

System One

Have you done any repairs or backups? This happened to me once before, I was browsing through some folders to see what was lingering around and I seen two folders labeled Backup1 and Backup2 from previous repairs or a reinstall I had done, can't remember which. These had taken up quit a bit of space. I just deleted them and all wa back to normal.
 

My Computer

System One

Hi,
Thanks for your reply. I am not aware of any backups being done although other people have access and Dell seem to do some sort of auto backup so I'll investigate.

Thanks again

Blaketon
 

My Computer

System One

Restore points also start to add up after some time...
I'd say the combination of these 2 makes that # just about right.
You can adjust how much drive space is allocated to system restore in that panel.

I believe the Vista default setting is 10% of drive space...so that would be 30G on yours.
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    Intel Q6600
    Motherboard
    ASUS P5K MBoard.
    Memory
    4G OCZ PC2 8500 Platinum
    Graphics card(s)
    EVGA 8800GTS Vid Card
    Hard Drives
    500G Seagate SATA 200G Seagate SATA 100G WD Caviar SATA 80G WD Caviar IDE
    PSU
    OCZ Elite 800W PSU
    Case
    RaidMax Smilodon Case
    Other Info
    Lite-On dual layer DVD burner X 2 Dos 6.2;Win2K;XP; & Vista Ultimate 64Bit.
The Vista shadowstorage setting is 15% maximum. So unless you reduce the shadowstorage, the 15% of your C will be filled again (over time). If you paste this command into an elevated Command Prompt, it will reduce your shadowstorage :
vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=300MB. Note that 300MB for MaxSize is the minimum allowed but I would suggest you set it to 10GB. That way you get at least some restore points. Also be aware that your current restore points will be purged when you resize.
If you want to check your current settings, use: vssadmin list shadowstorage.

Edit: I also recommend you use WinDirStat ( http://windirstat.info/ ) to show you what's on your disk. It will, however, not show the shadowstorage. For that you have to use the above command.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dell
    CPU
    Q6600
    Memory
    4GB
    Monitor(s) Displays
    HP w2207h
    Hard Drives
    2x250GB HDDs 1x60GB OCZ SSD 6 external disks 60 to 640GBs
    Other Info
    Also 1xHP desktop, 1xHP laptop, 1xGateway laptop
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top