Is WinXP 12 GB, or is there other stuff taking up space?

[thatcrazycommie]

Am I insane, or is Windows taking up way too much space on my hard drive? It says the capacity is 87.9 (out of 100) GB, which would bring us to a total of 12.1. That seems massive. Is that actually all Windows, and I'm just stupid for thinking otherwise, or is there something else I can get rid of to up my capacity? I know there's all that ThinkVantage crap, but I'm pretty sure removing that would just increase my free space, not my total.

[mgo]

Am I insane, or is Windows taking up way too much space on my hard drive? It says the capacity is 87.9 (out of 100) GB, which would bring us to a total of 12.1. That seems massive. Is that actually all Windows, and I'm just stupid for thinking otherwise, or is there something else I can get rid of to up my capacity? I know there's all that ThinkVantage crap, but I'm pretty sure removing that would just increase my free space, not my total.

System Restore can take up a lot of space if you have several restore points. Also, if your original XP install was Service Pack 1 and you have upgraded to Service Pack 2, the old Service Pack files and folders are pretty big.

How large is your swap file and hibernate file? Have you done the IBM Rescue & Recovery? This will take up a lot of space, too.

My ThinkPad has less than 6 gig but my swap file is pretty small due to lots of RAM, and I don't use Hibernate, so that lops off a couple gig.

[thatcrazycommie]

How can I tell how big my swap and hibernate files are? (To be honest, I'm not even positive what those are. I have heard that a swap file is supposed to be twice the size of your ram, though, which would in this case mean 4 GB [I've got 2 GB Ram]. Is that "twice the size" rule really true?)

Also, Windows Update did have to download a whole ton of stuff, but I'm not sure if I already had SP2 or not. Again, any way to tell?

Thanks.

[SHoTTa35]

those crazy commies i tell ya...

Ok first off, that 87.9GB you have... let's start with that. First off the 100Gb drive you haven't is actually only a 97GB drive. 1GB is 1024MB where as manufacturers like to say it's 1000MB. So the drive they have is actually 100,000MB but when you dividie that by 8 you get the real world value of 97GB. The IBM partition is usually around 7GB so that's where you're left with your 90GB.

Your hiberfile.sys is 2GB. Your pagefile.sys is probably the default of 1.2GB so you're about right there.

The hiberfile.sys and pagefile.sys are hidden on the C drive so go tools, options and unhide system and hidden files to see them. You can't however delete them. To disable them you have to turn off hibernation in the power options area and the page file you can turn it down so that it uses less HD but don't turn it off as some programs wont work and windows can't save error data without a page file if/when it BSODs. The page file is in the advanced menu of computer properties, - performance area.

Oh and odds are you already had Windows XP SP2 (start - run - winver - click OK) since it's been out for years now. Windows Update just had to download all the patches that came out after SP2 (pre-SP3)

[thatcrazycommie]

The IBM partition is usually around 9GB so that's where you're left with your 90GB.

Any way to reduce that? Was I wrong when I said I thought that removing the ThinkVantage stuff would only increase my free space and not my capacity?

Also, thanks. That was a very helpful explanation.

[SHoTTa35]

removing the thinkvantage stuff will only give you more free space not affect your capacity.

As for the 7GB of stuff, well you can't reduce it. You can only have it or not. As for me i don't because i format my machine with a clean Windows install. I don't want all the extra stuff. You probably should just leave that as it is tho, if your system crashing its what will restore it to a working order. That's the system recovery partition or IBM Pre-Desktop thingy.

Another note tho, you got a 100GB drive tho, if you were going to do movies and lots of other huge files you would have gotten a bigger drive. If you just plan on taking some pics and word docs and all that you prolly wont fill that drive anytime soon so why the worry about a few measly GBs? I'm sure if you were selling something and someone offered you $90 out of $100 cuz that's all they had you'd be like sure.. no problemo right right? Yup

[thatcrazycommie]

You're right, it doesn't really matter. It's just the principle of the thing that bothers me . (Also, the bigger disks are slower.) I don't really understand what that IBM partition is for, though. The system won't be able to recover itself without that 7 GB of ... whatever it is?