hard drive space dramatically reducing! HELP!

I.J.

I got a new laptop recently. HP Pavilion with Windows Vista. I just noticed within a few days that the local disc space had reduced 5GB and today within a couple of hours it had reduced 3GB. I emptied Temporary Internet Files and History but it made no difference. I have not had any major downloads and I'm starting to panic. Could anybody please help me! I really need urgent support - thank you.

Karoma

Download SpaceMonger or something similar and see what's eating up the space.

DarkJager

Are you using any software like Norton Ghost/Go Back? It could also be the windows backup utility is set to full instead of incremental backup.

dubfir

hi could be just system restore, knock it off and on again. You should get ur space back.

ntlbell

yep

turn off system restore problem solved

Overheal

Thats an oddity. Could be the Index setting up. But if you're running torrents - almost as soon as you have a partial file (at least the head and tail pieces of the file) it automatically reserves its full size on the Disk. Eg. You might have a DVD image 2% downloaded, but by then it will already take up 4.7gb on the machine.

I.J.

Thank you very much for your rapid responses. If I do go ahead with the system restore whats the worst that can happen? As I'm working on a new computer, having updated from quite an old one, a lot of things have changed so I'm not used to the possible mishaps I may encounter.

PogMoThoin

Your hibernate file will be a few GB's also, if You don't use it then You can delete it in System tools--> disk cleanup

I.J.

I just came across this site which appears to explain the problem I have. Would any of you guys reccomend carrying out this idea? :

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/04/20/hot-to-reduce-disk-space-used-by-windows-vista-system-restore/

Thanks!.

Overheal

if you really want the extra space, yes. But restore can be awfully handy when something goes wrong.

I.J.

Thanks again for the response. Do you suggest I just leave it then? Will the amount of space that is being eaten up eventually stop? Could it be something to do with the windows live updates, because it started dwindling from the day I first installed the first update last week?

andy1249

It will stop at the limit set , using that link that you posted you can see what the limit is by typing " vssadmin list shadowstorage " into the command prompt.

You can resize it here too , and you can also go into system restore and say how many restore points you want to keep.

If you leave it as is , it will use up approx double the vista install space in restore points , if your hard drive is big enough just leave it , as they can get you out of trouble should you have any.

I.J.

Hey Andy, thanks for that info. Do you mind if I run this by you. The laptop is supposed to have 250GB Hard drive. The local disc states a total of 221GB. Available space has reduced to 181GB. In command prompt it states:
used shadow storage space: 8.775GB
allocated ss space: 10.238GB
Maximum ss space: 33.187GB

Does this sound like it is working smoothly and at what amount of GB should I finally see the disc space stop reducing so rapidly?

andy1249

Yes , its working as it should ,

The Vista shadowstorage and restore will use a maximum of 33GB for shadowstorage and whatever it uses in restore points , so I would say a maximum of 40GB will be used for this on top of whatever space your install ( usually about 15GB ) and your personal files and programs use.

It wont go any further than that , and as long as you have plenty of space left I'd leave it alone , as it really can be useful to have the ability to restore.

I.J.

Thanks a lot for your help Andy and to everybody else for making me feel at ease. I will be keeping an eye on this and hope it does stop reducing in a few days.