Where does all the drive space go?

[ap]

I just did a new install of xp and on a 7.3 GB partition, I only have 2.45 GB of free space! When I open the contents of the partition, the biggest of three folders is "windows" and it's only 1.66 GB. "Documents and Settings" and "Program Files" each are under 300 MB. I should have around 5 GB left, right?

 

[scarboro78]

I just did a new install of xp and on a 7.3 GB partition, I only have 2.45 GB of free space! When I open the contents of the partition, the biggest of three folders is "windows" and it's only 1.66 GB. "Documents and Settings" and "Program Files" each are under 300 MB. I should have around 5 GB left, right?

There are tons of hidden system files you don't see. If you go into your file settings you'll find an option to view hidden files. You'll be amazed at the crpa that pops up.

 

[ap]

I considered hidden files, but I figured their drive usage would still show up as counted in the size shown when mousing over the folder icon.

Either way, I just want to make sure something's not screwed-up, so how much should an install use?

BTW, is there still a boot boundary limitaion on installing xp on a second partition? (Actually I plan on installing xp64)

 

[Ethan Winer]

ap,

> how much should an install use? <

A clean install of Windows XP should fill just under 2 GB. Also, delete everything in c:\temp and c:\windows\temp after installing, then empty the recycle bin. If you still have more than 2 GB did you really do a clean install, or did you install over an existing installation? To do a "clean" install you have to format C: first.

--Ethan

 

[ap]

windows/temp is empty

can't find c:\temp

This is a fresh install on brand new hard drive formatted and partitioned when prompted by xp cd.

 

[ap]

Hah! It was the paging file, AKA virtual memory. By default xp set this equal to my ram-2GB-though it typically defaults to 1.5Xram. I guess it knew it was on a proportionately too small partition. Easy enough to reset in advanced settings.

BTW, apparently it's a bad idea to totally eliminate the virtual memory even if you have loads of ram. 2 MB is minimum allowed, I think.

All of this is somewhat academic since this is just my system partition and I probably won't ever need all 7.5 GB anyway, but I'll sleep a little better now.