Vista - Problem with Hard drive!

Hey

I was just looking on my hard drive and i noticed that it says 256gb free for 451gb

Im not sure why this is because all my files including the hidden files and everything, comes to 112GB only and its telling me i have 200gb of used space when i dont.

Does anyone know why this is happening? Ive cleared the recycle bin aswell but still cant see what the problem is.

thanks

Disable System Restore to recover space.

Oh its because its making backups?

Yes. System restore does tend to chew up space. I would leave it on. You have 256GB free. Add another hard drive and move your applications and data to it. You can get a 7200.11 500GB 32MB drive for $80.

Is there a maximum amount of space it will use or does it just make a copy of the contents of my hard drive, so just doubling the space used?

It can make multiple copies for system restore because you roll back to many dates. You can disable system restore to clear all restore points. Reboot. Turn it back on and create new restore points. Every time you add something new, it creates a new restore point. Unless you are really chewing up disk space, don't worry about it. You are better off with many restore points.

you can download and install windirstat. it will tell you specifically what files are in your installation as well as how large the files are. it gives a graphical display of those files, as well, so you can really see what files are in your installation and the size of them. the larger the block, the bigger the file.

the first pic shows the program querying your system and the second pic shows the graphical representation of the files. i have team fortress 2 content.gcf highlighted and there is a white square on the bottom that corresponds to the size of that file within files>steamapps>steam>program files (x86)>windows(c)

here mate , i set mine to 900mb , dont disable it it will get you out the sh!t one day

Change the amount of space used by System Restore | Windows Vista for Beginners

to delete all but the most recent restore point and recover a load os space now goto disc cleanup and more options select system restore there

Agree with archie123

Disabling System Restore is only asking for trouble, especially if you need to roll back to an earlier state because something went crazy with your system.

I've left mine as is, but I have plenty of hard drive space.