T400 HD space: Windows Vista Business (64 bit)

[jaimeet]

I just bought a T400 with Windows Vista Business (64 bit). I'd opted for a 64Gb ssd. Imagine my surprise when the system arrives with ~40 gigs already used up!

3 partitions, the C: (SW_Preload ~47Gb), Lenovo ( ~10Gb) and S: (servicev003 ~2Gb), I created the restore disks and deleted the "lenovo" partition to reclaim the space, but even so I have only 23Gb or so available.

Windows plus all the the lenovo stuff is using up close to 31Gb. Plus 4Gb for the hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys, and if I upgrade to 4gb ram, I'll be left with 18-19Gb

Will the restore disks allow me to do a clean install?
Will it even help this, how much disk usage can I expect with that?


I also have a 3rd unrelated question, is there any way to connect this computer to a TV that does not have a VGA in?

thanks guys!

[Marin85]

The restore disks will allow you to do a clean install in so far that they are a backup of the factory content of your system. But to accomplish a clean install you will need a clean Vista media (preferably with SP1 included). The tricky part here is that the clean install won´t really solve your disk space problem Vista Business x64 takes up alone about 15 GB of your disk space. Then you add all the Shadow copies / OS restore points (which may take up even more space than with a clean install due to the preloaded software) and you have it. The good news is that the latter can be tamed or even disabled within the OS. I would also get rid of the hyberfil.sys because the machine would boot from the SSD faster than wake up from hybernation (my guess, but anyway it boots really fast, so I don´t really see any practical use of Vista hybernation, but that is just because I don´t use it and I regularly tend to save my work).
To sum up: after a clean install, tamed shadow copy service / restore points, deleting Lenovo hidden partition (ah, I see you have already done this) and deleting the hybernation file, the whole install should use up about 16 GB of your SSD. I almost forgot to mention, although you have a 64GB SSD, it probably offers only about 60 GB real space (I have 320 GB HD and I have only 298 GB at my disposal with or without anything installed / written on it).

Hope this helps

Marin

[jaimeet]

Thank you for that, the information does help, unfortunately I dont have my own vista media, I suppose that the Lenovo Oem Vista Product key will not work for the regular version of vista?

Disabling hibernation was a good idea, that does save another 2 gigs right of the bat and I'll see what I can do about the restore points.

By the way ,did you have an idea about the ability to connect to a tv?

[basketb]

...By the way ,did you have an idea about the ability to connect to a tv?

If your TV has an HDMI input, you can get either an Advanced Dock or an Advanced Mini Dock (probably the more economical choice) and a DVI->HDMI cable (and a suitable audio cable) and connect the Thinkpad to the TV via the dock.