Thread: Windows Vista HDD space.

On the mac there is a utility called whatsize. It goes through your hard disk and sums up all the folder sizes, and then breaks it down and so on. It highlights anything once it is in Gig.

I'm sure there would be a version for the pc. Try tucows or sourceforge. I'd do that before nuking.

Originally Posted by loanrangie

I found a HP server in the hard garbage today while out, twin Xeon 2.4gig cpu's, 3 gig ram, 80gig hdd,6 USB/3 firewire, dvd burner etc, now it just happens to have a fresh install of vista. When i look in the system files it shows 49 gig used and i for the life of me cant find any other large files/docs that would take up that much space, surely pista cant be that space hungry can it ? Might do a fresh install of Win 7 and see how that works.

Did you turn on the display of hidden & system files? If the machine has service packs installed there are likely all the uninstall files hidden somewhere.

maybe a huge swap file if its setup for a server box

Not used to vista, it has only used 24.9 gig for a basic install , seems ok although similar to XP some numbnuts thought they would just rename things to confuse the average PC user - i bet XP would fly on this thing.
I my even just turn it into a Freenas server for my media files and backups.

just measured mine,,
The windows folder itself is out to around 21gb after two years,,

and most of my stuff is on another drive,,

Thing is with most OS's when you install them is one thing, but as everything writes temp files they slowly expand. It's just the way of things.

For refference OS X is about 13gb but that includes the OS and all software I have installed like office.

Far out - my XP Pro machine's Windows directory:

3.42 GB (3,682,674,986 bytes)

My Vista Home Basic is 16 Gigs, so all those bells and whistles on the more expensive versions must chew the gigs. Regards Philip A