[Neshi]

I have a partition of 35gb, and I have windows installed on here.
Afterwards I installed Office, and some must-have codecs/drivers on it.
All of a sudden I am left with 1,5gb. I am pretty sure it was more before..

Anyone know what might cause it?
And I already regularly clean the disk..

[CDsDontBurn]

which version of vista did you install? If you have ultimate, i belive it's something like 15 or 20GB just for the OS itself. after drivers and a few proggies here and there, i wouldn't be surprised that the partition is already filled.

[mkk]

35GB can easily get a little slim for Vista, but in your case perhaps it's some game that is taking up a lot of storage space in the user folder as more and more do without asking (I once had a game with 6GB of save files in there). By default on a 35GB drive the System Restore function can use up to 5.25GB of storage with files that are also hidden from the user. While one can lower that limit it's best not to as System Restore can be really useful in a pinch. It also needs more space under Vista than under WinXP simply because the important system areas are larger. You could also put the swapfile on another harddrive if you haven't already, which is a good thing to do in general anyway.

A system partition of 100GB is nice.

[Neshi]

It's Ultimate..
but that kinda sucks. Guess the only solution is a fresh install with a bigger partition..

Would compressing the partition be an idea to free up space, or is that a bad thing to do, considering it is the OS?
And what about something like Partition Magic, is that something that could work?

[mkk]

NTFS compression doesn't slow down the system much since todays CPU's are so fast, but a few areas are already compressed by default and others may not get much smaller. You could try it as a temporary measure until you have time for the real fix.

[OldBuzzard]

Also, make sure you put the PAGEFILE on a different partition. In fact, even a different HDD woud be even better.

[CDsDontBurn]

Originally Posted by OldBuzzard

Also, make sure you put the PAGEFILE on a different partition. In fact, even a different HDD woud be even better.

if you have an i-RAM drive, i'd suggest to have 4GB of some cheap-o DDR memory be your page file drive. it'll be ubber fast since it's solid state . don't believe me, check out the linked video

Gigabyte I-Ram

IMO, for only 4GB maximum capacity, it's pointless to install windows on this, but it gives you an idea of how fast this is!

[Neshi]

OldBuzzard, could you explain a little about pagefiling?
How big must this space be, I see contradictory things said about this issue on the internet... it's a bit confusing.

[OldBuzzard]

This page will explain it better that I can:
RAM, Virtual Memory, Pagefile and all that stuff

MS basically says to use (your RAM) x 1.5 to start with. The more RAM you have, the smaller PAGEFILE you 'should' need. I have 8GB, and still have a 16GB page file, but it's on a seperate HDD. I went 'over spec', but I have a LOT of HDD space, and it's not an issue of running out or storage space for me. I haven't looked, but most likely, my system rarely uses it, but, it's there if it's needed.

This isn't anything new. Back in the early DOS days on IBM mainframe days we had the same thing, but it was called OVERLAYS. If you wrote a program that excedded the available memory of the system, the compiler would put part of it on the disk, and move it into memory if/when needed. Writing a program that went into overlays was a huge no no, as they were horribly slow. If fact, sometimes it was faster to break it up into 2 programs instead of trying to do it all in one, as it was faster that way. I can remember compiling, re-compiling, and re-re-re...compiling trying to save memory. We are talking BYTES here, anything to reduce the program by maybe 5 or 6 bytes so that it would fit. When you were working with a system like the IBM 360 Mod 20 that had 8K total, and even less available RAM (called core storage then), BYTES were important

Darn, now ya got me 'feeling my age". Now, where the hell did I leave that Geritol®?!? I need a hit.

[IvanV]

Originally Posted by Neshi

It's Ultimate..
but that kinda sucks. Guess the only solution is a fresh install with a bigger partition..

Would compressing the partition be an idea to free up space, or is that a bad thing to do, considering it is the OS?
And what about something like Partition Magic, is that something that could work?

Partition Magic would work, except that it hasn't been updated for years, ever since Symantec bought it, so there might be a compatibility issue (I no longer remember, but current OS-es and software allow some things that were not allowed before when creating partitions, so PM told me that the drive was corrupt and wouldn't work, even though everything was fine; a damn shame because I've used that program many times and I love it). I suggest you try Paragon Partition Manager, it worked well for me when I needed to do exactly the same thing as you now, so the biggest risk is probably the possibility of a sudden power loss.

[OldBuzzard]

Originally Posted by IvanV

Partition Magic would work ...

NO, NO, a 1,000 times NO!

Do NOT use Partition Magic when you are working with Vista. With PQM you risk losing everything when it's used with Vista.

I beta test for HyperOS, and it always came with PQM for setting up partitions, and it was just fine for any Windows OS up to, and including XP. Vista however does not like 'something' in the way PQM partitions, and you WILL have problems with PQM.

If you are going to use anyting, go with ACRONIS DISK DIRECTOR. It will work for Vista.

[RoyBatty]

GParted should work with Vista partitions too. Though I personally used it only with XP partitions so far.

[IvanV]

So I was lucky PM decided my drive was corrupt before it did anything? Whew! Though i remember that, prior to installing Vista, I used it to partition my hard drive and had no problems, I'll never go near my PC with it.

[Judas]

40gb paritions for vista don't leave much room.... although you should be able to install a number of programs without running out..... i usually don't make a partition smaller then 50gb for vista.

[OldBuzzard]

Well...there is ONE way PQM works for Vista.

IF you start with a clean HDD, partition and format it with PQM, and THEN install Vista you are good to go.

Once you have Vista on the system...don't even THINK about using PQM on that system again.

[Neshi]

well, I found out I had a lot of temporary files within my user map on the C-disk. It was in Appdata, and it was hidden, that's why I couldn't find it. Was a file of 7gb+ there that had no business doing there at all. After a bit searching and cleaning I have about 12gb free again.
I have set my pagefile now on a different HDD, so that problem is being solved too. I guess I'm good. When I do a fresh install I will remember this though and make my windows partition a fair bit larger!

Thank you all for helping!