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General discussion

Hard drive on brand new computer filling up too fast!

by mopsmom1 Jan 2, 2009 12:07PM PST

For Christmas we bought my daughter an Acer 6930 laptop running 64-bit Vista with a 250 GB HDD. It was on sale and the only one we could get our hands on was the demo. The harddrive was partitioned into 2 equal halves (apparently this is an Acer trademark!??) and the C:\ drive (109 GB) had over 50 GB of stuff on it. Assuming this was because it was a demo, I immediately began to decrapify the thing (www.decrapify.com).

However, the more stuff I took off, the less space I had on the hard drive. And, when I looked at the directories on the C: drive, it only showed about 5 GB of files. I took the machine back and miraculously they had gotten a shipment of new machines and they exchanged it for a new one.

Well...I brought the machine home and the hard drive was partitioned equally in halves and the C: drive had about 18 GB of stuff...but I could only see about 3-5 GB. Acer apparently creates a hidden restore partition that takes up 15 GB. Of course, it also came preloaded with CRAP and I began to decrapify it again. No matter how much stuff I took off, it didn't make a dent. I uninstalled MS Works, MS Office, all games, several ISP offers. I ran the disk clean-up (and salvaged a whopping 5 MB). I was quickly over 30 GB on the hard drive.

My daughter has been chomping at the bit for this machine and I need to get her up and running before she has to go back to school. So I went ahead and installed iTunes and her library (< 30 MB), printer drivers, and a fresh install of MS Office Pro. No docs, pictures, nor video.

As of right now the C: has 56 GB free (of 109 GB) or 50% free. Call me crazy, but this can't be right.

I took the advice of this thread:
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6132_102-0.html?forumID=32&threadID=223033&start=0&tag=forum-w;forums06

and checked the processes on the task manager. The largest process is explorer.exe which has written 266 KB this session.

If someone has answers, please let me know. I'm open to reformatting the harddrive (especially to remove the excessive partition), but it will have to be really soon so my daughter can have her laptop for school.

Thanks much.

Discussion is locked

5 Posts
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and now for the rest of my post...
by mopsmom1 Jan 2, 2009 12:19PM PST
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See if this helps.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jan 2, 2009 12:22PM PST
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1 Other Thought For The Future...
by tobeach Jan 2, 2009 3:42PM PST

Make a point of immediately burning a CD/DVD copy of that 15 G back up
by the manufacturer. In the programs of the OS there is a make back-up disk option. Usually this can be done as brand new (w/crap included) or later (after de-crapifying) at time of your choice. This is how you'll get your re-install disk to use if you have to reformat or replace HD for any reason. Too many fail to do this & end up having to buy another copy from manufacturer.

First thing I did w/ my new Vista laptop & then created another a week later after cleaning out all including Norton. Good Luck! Happy

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Thanks for the input
by mopsmom1 Jan 3, 2009 12:22AM PST

Thanks for the restore CD suggestion. I immediately made one (or 3 DVDs worth) right out of the box. Anyway Acer has a pesky reminder that won't go away until you burn the disks.

R. Proffitt:
Thanks for the thread link. I'd already completed most of the suggestions, but I did download TreeSize. Here's the results:

41,000 MB C:\
- 16,400 MB Windows (10 GB winsys, 3 GB System32...)
- 11,300 MB Users (my bad we had 10 GB in iTune Library)
- 8,400 MB Files (I can't see into this folder)
- 2,400 MB Program Files
- 1,800 MB in Acer\Preload\autorun folder???
- remaining folders under 1 GB

I have 4 folders with access denied:
- Users\Nicole\Administrator
- MSOCache
- PerfLogs
- System Volume Information <-- sounds like something I'd like to see

TreeSize did not detect the hidden partition with the 15 GB of restore files.

If I add these all together, they seem legit. I just can't believe that software has gotten so massive...I don't even have pictures or video on the thing!

The desktop that I'm migrating from only had an 80 GB HDD which 3 users used for 3 years. All the junk on it only totaled 40 GB!

If the experts out there think everything's OK, I'll start installing software...however, I am still thinking about reclaiming the D: drive by eliminating the partition.

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Re: system volume information
by Kees Bakker Jan 3, 2009 12:27AM PST

That's the folder that the Windows System Restore uses to store old data so you can go back to it. It grows and grows and grows until you toggle System Restore from enabled to disabled (and back, preferably), because that's the only way to empty it. And you can't look into it.

The winsys folder is strange. Not on my XP. But it might be a Vista speciality or an Acer specialty. Anyway, if it was present when you first used the machine already and you don't need the disk space for something else, don't care too much about it.


Kees

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