50 gb of hd space missing?

[Dave21]

I have a seagate 7200.11 500 gb HDD and it recognizes ~465 gb.

Now it says I've used 100 gb of that 465. I've checked my installed programs and viewed the properties in my drive c: and it's less than ~50gb. So where did the other 50 gb go? I run ccleaner already so its definitely not a problem with temp files. Any clue?

Is there a harddrive diagnostics I could run or something?

[glc]

System restore.

[Dave21]

Originally Posted by glc System restore.

Thanks glc, i knew I was overlooking something. I just read it may take up to 15% of the hdd space.

Thanks again!

[Cricket]

I set System Restore Disk Space Usage to 5% (about 1GB on my 80GB HDD) and use the Disk Cleanup System Restore clean up option about once a month.

Cricket

[HAL9000]

I experiment with the restore percentage until it gives me two previous days of restores available. I think right now I have mine set to 3%.

[Dave21]

I've tried searching around vista and can't find the menu to lower the restore percentage?

Does anyone know where that is in vista? Thanks!

[shadowpr]

I don't believe vista has that option. I think it's either on, or off if I remember correctly.

[Dave21]

Originally Posted by shadowpr I don't believe vista has that option. I think it's either on, or off if I remember correctly.

That takes up a lot of space then. Wow. It already uses up 50+gb. And its increasing.

[shadowpr]

I just turned my system restore off.

In the event of an emergency, I'll just do a reinstall. Have all my personal stuff on a different drive anyway.

[Dave21]

Originally Posted by shadowpr I just turned my system restore off. In the event of an emergency, I'll just do a reinstall. Have all my personal stuff on a different drive anyway.

I found the solution:
http://www.vista4beginners.com/Syste...ore-Space-Used

In 2 weeks, system restore used 70 gb. I allocated 2 gb of space which seems more reasonable now.

[shadowpr]

Nice link.

[Dave21]

Originally Posted by shadowpr Nice link.

I thought so too but I think I set my limit too low. My computer crashed a few days ago and could not recover to an earlier date. I should probably try again but this time allocate more space, maybe 20 gb or so in order to have several restore points.

[shadowpr]

Keep us posted if as to what you find is the optimal amount of space to set it as. Just in case I decide to ever use system restore again.

[glc]

Hard drives are so cheap these days you might as well just leave it at defaults for maximum safety.

[Dave21]

Originally Posted by glc Hard drives are so cheap these days you might as well just leave it at defaults for maximum safety.

That is a good point. I don't even think I'll use up that much space on my harddrive so I think I'll just leave the default settings. The most it'll take up is 75 gb. It'll save a lot of hassle in the future if something does happen.