Where did all my HD space go?

[marlinspike]

My HD's total size is listed as 92.5gb. Only 17.2gb are free, but all the files on C only add up to 35gb. So where are those other 40gb?

[tomh009]

How did you determine the 35 GB for the files?

You can click on folder properties in c:\ to find the sizes for Program Files, Documents and Settings and Windows (the three usual suspects). On top of that you'll have virtual memory and a hibernation file, which will be a gigabyte or two each, depending on your physical memory size.

Can you check on those folders and let us know -- we can then suggest further investigation.

[marlinspike]

img]http://Davidson.smugmug.com/photos/126869753-L.jpg[/img]

[Ken Fox]

My HD's total size is listed as 92.5gb. Only 17.2gb are free, but all the files on C only add up to 35gb. So where are those other 40gb?

off the top of my head I'd guess you have rescue and recovery backups which are hidden from the Windows XP OS and not seen, but which take up disk space. Go into R&R and look at prior backups, and delete those you don't need (or all of them if you have another method of backup that you use).

[marlinspike]

You know, I've done that before but I forget how. How was it that I get to that R&R console again?
Thanks,
Richard

[Ken Fox]

You know, I've done that before but I forget how. How was it that I get to that R&R console again?
Thanks,
Richard

I'm at my desktop right now, but as I recall, you go to Start Programs->Thinkvantage->Rescue and Recovery.

There is an "Advanced" tab and when you click on that you will get a choice to"view all backups."

You can then check the boxes of backups you want deleted and click on "delete."

If you are not relying on this program to backup your system (i.e. you are using something else like Ghost or Acronis) then you can delete all backups and turn scheduled backups OFF. This will prevent the problem from recurring. If on the other hand you are relying on R&R for your backups, then periodically look at what is piling up there to avoid having this same problem recur in the future (assuming that my diagnosis was correct, that is).

[marlinspike]

Well, I am using R&R for my backups, but there was only one listed. To the backups take as much space as the normally accessible stuff or something?

[dfumento]

Run a program like foldersizes to determine how your disk space is used. It will allow you to deletes as well.

[Ken Fox]

Well, I am using R&R for my backups, but there was only one listed. To the backups take as much space as the normally accessible stuff or something?

It could be close depending on your file sizes and how much they can be compressed. Normally I'd expect it to be a little bit smaller. The one thing you don't want to do is if you use another backup program, an imaging program, is to image your drive with backups on it. In that situation you are going to be imaging your drive plus a copy of your drive which is going to take up a lot of space and not really offer you anything extra for it in the case of a catastrophic disk problem. As it is, assuming you image the service partition, you are imaging basically another copy of your disk at an earlier time, and adding an R&R backup to that is going to be overkill and producing a voluminous file that takes forever to write.

[DavidNY]

You could run SequoiaView on your drive to get a visual map of the files.

[YourOldBuddy]

If you like to have your data backed up, you should be able to find RnR under "Start-All Programs-Thinkvantage-RescueAndRecovery". There you should be able to delete your backups. You should also be able to make a new backup and skip the unimportant sections.

If you dont care about your backups, go to control panel and add remove programs. Remove RNR and restart. After that you should be able to delete a hidden folder called RRBackups. Voila your HD space should be back.

[marlinspike]

It was the backup taking up all that space. Does R&R just really suck at compressing files, or would any back up software take up all that space?

[Ken Fox]

It was the backup taking up all that space. Does R&R just really suck at compressing files, or would any back up software take up all that space?

Other backup software would take up space SOMEWHERE ELSE. Generally, it is not advisable to backup your system on the same physical disk, which is the default for R&R. With hard disk space very cheap these days, you could just buy an external drive or an internal drive for a desktop, if the latter either an enclosure or an adapter for it, then backup to that other drive. As someone who frequently builds and updates my desktop(s), I tend to accumulate cast off drives which serve nicely for this purpose. If you watch the online deal sites it is not uncommon to finds drives with 300gb of space selling for well under $100, and smaller drives selling for less. An enclosure or adapter can run as little as $12 or $15 delivered. Several weeks ago I bought a very nice 250gb USB2 Buffalo Tech drive for $69.99 after $30 rebate, from frys.com

So if it takes 30gb (probably less) to back up your hard drive, it's no big deal.

Most backup software does offer different levels of compression for the backups. I'm sure that the extent to which the drive contents can be compressed is going to be a function of what is on your drive.

[marlinspike]

I've got a few drives laying around that I use in external cases that are all like 60% full...I guess it's time to consolidate them and make one just a backup drive.

[marlinspike]

Ok, I've got one drive cleared. Is there some formatting or something I have to do before using this drive for my backups (it's a 40gb 5400rpm 2.5" drive in a usb2 external enclosure, I assume that's fine?)? Since I'm using a separate drive and R&R, in the event of a main hard drive failure, how will I get the backup off this drive?
Thanks,
Richard

[Ken Fox]

Ok, I've got one drive cleared. Is there some formatting or something I have to do before using this drive for my backups (it's a 40gb 5400rpm 2.5" drive in a usb2 external enclosure, I assume that's fine?)? Since I'm using a separate drive and R&R, in the event of a main hard drive failure, how will I get the backup off this drive?
Thanks,
Richard

Format the drive (NTFS). The problem I've had with writing R&R files to other drives is that (at least in the versions I used) the resulting files are invisible to Windows. That is to say that you don't know how big they are and can't access them except within the R&R program. It makes it hard to figure out how many backups you can get on the drive, for example. Perhaps they have fixed this.

I never was happy with using R&R to write to other drives and hence when I used it I wrote the backups to optical disks. But now I don't use the program at all except for when I travel and will have no access to any other way to restore my hard disk.

If you are going to write these files to another hard disk I'd suggest a more mainstream imaging program.

[marlinspike]

Hmmm...well..I don't plan on keeping more than one backup, so, maybe it won't be an issue for me. I guess I'll find out.

[noworrries]

Hi, I have the same effect, out of 100Gb about 40 GB are missing to normal windows functions... (Properties of c:\ and Properties after selecting all files on the drive (system and hidden files visible) )

In the rescue and recovery programm under view all backups it states that there are "No backups found". Also, I never let it do any backups, but most of the missing space is in the RRBackups folder.

(Sidetrack how I figured:
When I burned recovery CDs, the hidden and protected folder RRBackups can be accessed (I could access while the CD was burnign the security tab for the folder and add my username and full access for it.., sadly it is gone after the recovery CDs are done). There were nearly 40 Gb in that folder...)

So it seems R&R saves files before you even let it do the first backup.

I choose to boot with a linux live CD and delete the files ones, later I removed R&R ...


noworrries

[Kliph]

While we're on the topic of Disk Space.........

Do any of you do a weekly/monthly delete of "bloatware"??

ie Temp Files, etc.......

In addition, I was wondering if there is a need to delete the
Lenovo SW upgrade/driver files.

I wld appreciate knowing what files can be safely thrown away.
(Aside from R&R)

Thx........Kliph

[wackydan]

Do you have a lot of MP3, JPG, MPG, AVI, WMV or any other highly compressed files? Due to their level of compression, imaging and backup utilities can not compress them much further, if at all, and that may be blowing up the size of your back up.

Furthermore...

RnR supports excluding files and folders... you could choose to exclude single large files or folders of the files above from the backup, provided you copy them to somewhere else as a backup for those files.

The new version 4 supports limiting the number of incremental backups that it takes as well.

Keep in mind that RnR stores the backups on the C: drive as default, and protects those backups by view with a filter driver. They are stored locally as RnR is primarily a recovery solution for when you actually don't have a hardware failure of the drive. -ie; virus, malware, etc.

You can do the primary backup to a USB drive or network with newer versions of RnR.

If using a USB drive, there is a utility to do one of the following....

1. prep the usb drive to make it bootable to the RnR Windows PE environment - handy for when your drive died and you are putting new drive in.

2. Burn a cd with the RnR WinPE code on it so you can boot to that and still access the backups on the usb drive.

That utility is found in the thinkvantage folder.

Good luck.

[marlinspike]

To make use of the bootable feature of the backup drive, the backup drive should really be SATA150 instead of ATA100, right?