HD space?

[Tokoro]

I ordered a X61 tablet with the 60 gb 7200 rpm drive. My computer just came a few days ago and it says that it only has 30/48 gigs free on the only local drive.

I understand that Vista took part of the harddrive to reduce it to 46 gigs. Did lenovo really install 18 gigs worth of bloatware?

Where did the other space go?

[jdhurst]

<snip> Did lenovo really install 18 gigs worth of bloatware?

No.
... JDH

[smoothoperator]

recovery partition?

[ryan18]

actually, bloatware isnt where your HD space went, lenovo is not to blame for that one. the amount you listed is actually normal. here is the breakdown:

when HD makers say GB, they mean 1,000,000,000 bytes, when in reality, a GB is 2^30 bytes which is 1,073,741,824 bytes. so 60 GB is actually approx. 55.879 GB as the computer sees it. so you actually only have 55.879 GB starting off.

then, lenovo makes an approx. 4.5 GB service partition i think it was called, plus a 1/2 GB fat32 swap partition. im not sure exactly what these partitions are used for, but they are there. so with all of this you are under 50 GB starting off. you said your laptop shows 30 out of 48 GB. im guessing that its closer to 49 GB on that main partition, but that sounds exactly right.

then for the 18 GB you are missing on that partition: on my x61T, the windows folder alone took up 8 GB, so lets just say 10 GB for the entire vista installation. then for the remaining 8 GB it would depend on how much RAM you have. you will have a page file as well as a hibernation file which will be the same if not a little more than the amount of RAM you have installed. i have 3 GB RAM and my hibernation file is slightly over 3 GB and my page file is 3.5 GB. ill assume you have the average of 2 GB of RAM so that would be slightly over 2 GB for your hibernation file and around 2.5 GB for your page file. that brings your 10 GB vista installation plus page and hibernation files to 14.5 GB.

the remaining 3.5 GB that is used would be spread out with other programs installed and what not. if you dont have 2 GB of RAM then that number would be different. also, I know by default on vista business, rescue and recovery is on by default, so before every time you download any updates required or add any of your own software, vista is making a restorable system point which eats up HD space in a hurry!! when i disabled this feature, it freed up almost 8 GB of space on my machine!!

so that is where your space went i know it kinds sucks how it ends up that way. i bought a 100 GB drive and have 68.8 currently available after only 2 days of use

[jdhurst]

I use XP and I know Vista uses more space, but here is an XP breakdown:

60 Gigabyte hard drive, 53 Gigabytes of space after (1) the calculation issue and (2) the Preload "Predesktop Area"

Existing free space: 20Gb

So: 33Gb used.

1. 4 Complete, workable, running computers (outside of XP) all with their own version of "Office" in total: 9Gb
2. My file store (each file known and accounted for): 6Gb
3. My Document store (each file known and accounted for): 2Gb
4. IBM Preload Driver store: 26Mb (0 for this exercise)
5. IBM Newest Driver store: 0.3Gb
6. IBMTOOLS: 0.7Gb
6a. "Driver Store": 5 + 6 = 1Gb
7. Windows System Restore: 1.5Gb
8. Page File: 0.5Gb
9. Hibernate File: 0
10. Office 2003 (as it claimed on install): 1Gb
11. Outlook message store: 0.8Gb
12. Cain LM Hash tables: 3Gb

12. Balance for ALL other application installs (dozens upon dozens) including Windows: 8Gb

This relates reasonably well to a Windows XP virtual machine with Office XP, and very little else (No security suite, no VMware, no tools, no mail, no Cain) that comes in at a bit over 7Gb.

... JDH

[Tokoro]

Wow, thanks so much for the clarification!