excessive hard drive usage

i am also noticing between 500mb-2Gb hard drive space loss on a regular basis i have tied to find where data or whatever is stored but could not can anyone else help -- dennoman

One of the biggest causes of apparent HDD usage is the way that different companies calculate HDD space. Windows calculates HDD space on the bianary system, while most HDD manfactors calculate space on the decimal system. The other loss occurs in files that are formed when the HDD is formated, index files are created that normally don't appear.

"dennoman" wrote in message

i am also noticing between 500mb-2Gb hard drive space loss on a regular basis i have tied to find where data or whatever is stored but could not can anyone else help

First, Vista does a lot of debugging and saves much of that information to your hard drive. Windows Mail creates all sorts of extra files. Also, look at disk cleanup and there should be about 4 options to check relating to Windows Error Reporting. Some of those are 40MB to 70MB.
System Restore creates many restore points. After every install, uninstall and even when the definitions for Windows Defender are updated or any Windows Update. Also, it creates regular "System Check Points". The space taken up can increase quite a bit. You can delete those restore points via disk cleanup.
Of course, if you are dual booting to XP- your restore points will automatically be deleted for you. Isn't that lovely? :-/
This may be what is throwing some users off. They spend a day or two, maybe more, using Vista. Installing stuff , removing stuff and all these restore points get created. Then wham- they boot to XP and back to Vista- all of sudden they have all this extra disk space.
-Michael

in answer to replies i did a clean full installationof vista and i regularly use disk cleanup and delete history etc from i.e.explorer but i shall try having a look at system restore as suggested by michael i shall still be glad of anything that can shed light on this subject thanking you all -- dennoman
"MICHAEL" wrote:

"dennoman" wrote in message i am also noticing between 500mb-2Gb hard drive space loss on a regular basis i have tied to find where data or whatever is stored but could not can anyone else help
First, Vista does a lot of debugging and saves much of that information to your hard drive. Windows Mail creates all sorts of extra files. Also, look at disk cleanup and there should be about 4 options to check relating to Windows Error Reporting. Some of those are 40MB to 70MB.
System Restore creates many restore points. After every install, uninstall and even when the definitions for Windows Defender are updated or any Windows Update. Also, it creates regular "System Check Points". The space taken up can increase quite a bit. You can delete those restore points via disk cleanup.
Of course, if you are dual booting to XP- your restore points will automatically be deleted for you. Isn't that lovely? :-/
This may be what is throwing some users off. They spend a day or two, maybe more, using Vista. Installing stuff , removing stuff and all these restore points get created. Then wham- they boot to XP and back to Vista- all of sudden they have all this extra disk space.
-Michael

One of the biggest causes of apparent HDD usage is the way that different companies calculate HDD space. Windows calculates HDD space on the bianary system, while most HDD manfactors calculate space on the decimal system. The other loss occurs in files that are formed when the HDD is formated, index files are created that normally don't appear.

Methinks you have the right answer to the wrong question...

Me thinks you're right. I was a bit tired when I first read and replied to the question. Opps.
"Homer J. Simpson" wrote:

One of the biggest causes of apparent HDD usage is the way that different companies calculate HDD space. Windows calculates HDD space on the bianary system, while most HDD manfactors calculate space on the decimal system. The other loss occurs in files that are formed when the HDD is formated, index files are created that normally don't appear.
Methinks you have the right answer to the wrong question...

I entered a similar question the other day - from answers I have received (see "loss of hard drive space") I have determined that the majority of my issue is related to system restore. This link http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/4ac505e6-dd8b-4ae7-80fa-b9d77cd8104d1033.mspx?mfr=true may be helpful to you. I checked the date of the last sytem restore, came back to my computer several hours later. The data on the hard drive had increased by about 3 gig, checked the date and time of the last system restore point again and it had changed, so that is why I think that is what is using up the hard drive space. If I had known about the "shadow copy" I would have bought a computer with Vista Ultimate.
"dennoman" wrote:

in answer to replies i did a clean full installationof vista and i regularly use disk cleanup and delete history etc from i.e.explorer but i shall try having a look at system restore as suggested by michael i shall still be glad of anything that can shed light on this subject thanking you all -- dennoman
"MICHAEL" wrote:
"dennoman" wrote in message i am also noticing between 500mb-2Gb hard drive space loss on a regular basis i have tied to find where data or whatever is stored but could not can anyone else help
First, Vista does a lot of debugging and saves much of that information to your hard drive. Windows Mail creates all sorts of extra files. Also, look at disk cleanup and there should be about 4 options to check relating to Windows Error Reporting. Some of those are 40MB to 70MB.
System Restore creates many restore points. After every install, uninstall and even when the definitions for Windows Defender are updated or any Windows Update. Also, it creates regular "System Check Points". The space taken up can increase quite a bit. You can delete those restore points via disk cleanup.
Of course, if you are dual booting to XP- your restore points will automatically be deleted for you. Isn't that lovely? :-/
This may be what is throwing some users off. They spend a day or two, maybe more, using Vista. Installing stuff , removing stuff and all these restore points get created. Then wham- they boot to XP and back to Vista- all of sudden they have all this extra disk space.
-Michael