XP eating up HD space

[LarMoeCur]

What up with XP and HDs? I just built my new system and installed XP. I have an 80G HD. I partitioned it in to 3 drives. One 40G, and 2 at 20G each. I'm hoping this will make defags easier along with keeping games, mp3, Apps, on different drives. Anyway, XP eat up over 4 gig. XP is calling the 40G drive 38 and the 20's 19's. Plus during the partitioning XP left 8mb out in limbo I was unable to do anything with because it was to small to partition. Anyone have any ideas how to fix this before I go any further in my PC build?

 

[corkyg]

XP, if left to its own devices, will suck up hard drive space snoot raw.

Here are some things you can do to control that. First, fix the size of your page file by making the max and the min equal. A good rule of thumb is to double your real RAM as a size.

Next, open Control Panel, System and hit the System Restore tab. Check the settings for each partition and move the slider to MINIMUM. It always defaults to MAXIMUM or 12% of your HDD space available.

If you are running NTFS, it will also take up some space for file management purposes.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: LarMoeCur
What up with XP and HDs? I just built my new system and installed XP. I have an 80G HD. I partitioned it in to 3 drives. One 40G, and 2 at 20G each. I'm hoping this will make defags easier along with keeping games, mp3, Apps, on different drives. Anyway, XP eat up over 4 gig. XP is calling the 40G drive 38 and the 20's 19's. Plus during the partitioning XP left 8mb out in limbo I was unable to do anything with because it was to small to partition. Anyone have any ideas how to fix this before I go any further in my PC build?

You never had an 80gig drive to begin with. Drive makers use 1000 per k to calculate size, operating systems use the correct 1024 per k to calculate size. Over many gigs the differences add up 🙂 You can't blame XP in this case, it didn't do anything wrong.

Bill

 

[thingy]

XP always leaves that 8Mb after Partitioning - there is a reason gor it but I've forgotten what it is

 

[jstultz]

Don't think you'll be really missing the 8mb anyway 😉

 

[LarMoeCur]

I'll miss the 8MB because I'm gready. 8mb is 8mb it's mine I want it back!!

I didn't know HD makers cheated you with mis-marking the drive sizes.

I love this place! A wealth of information!!

 

[PowerMacG5]

Is that 8mb actually neccesary? I partitioned my drive using the installation, then when I restored my HDD using DriveImage, I took that 8mb away, to give me the full capacity. Is that 8mb used for anything and did I skrew something up, or is it useless?

 

[kazamobah]

I believe hibernation is enabled by default. If you don't use it, disable it in control panel/power options/hibernate.

When hibernation is enabled a file the size of your RAM is created on your hard drive. Depending how much RAM you have, this can result in a lot of wasted hard drive space.

 

[patsun123]

the harddrive people never tricked you... its just from a PR standpoint... 80gb sounds and looks better than writing... well... not gonna figure out which power of 2 80gb is... Its just the way computers are, they operate in base2, we operate in base 10 for the most part... if u dont like it... i guess u could invent something else? 😛.

i believe the 8mb is reserved for the boot record...

if none of this pleases you, you can ship the harddrive to me and i will try to "fix" it for an indefinite amount of time. 🙂

 

[cleverhandle]

I remember a knowledgeable-sounding person stating that the 8MB is reserved for transitioning a Basic Disk to a Dynamic Disk. Some kind of extra information that needs to be stored, so XP (2000 too, probably?) is looking out for you.