Disappearing 8GB on Hard Drive?!

My hard drive space fluctuates between 20GB free and 12GB free randomly. It is normally around 11.8GB free but after installing the Thinkvantage Rescue and Recovery program it showed 20GB free. After a restart, it's back at 11GB free.

In Computer Management, it shows that my main hard drive has a 149GB NTFS capacity, with 6.5GB used by the hidden partition and 142.55GB used by the main C:/ local drive.


Any ideas as to what may be causing this? I thought it might have something to do with the hidden partition, but the hidden partition is not counted as part of the total space on C:/.

 

I think this has to do with Vista restore points. I am having the same problem with my 200GB drive. Large blocks of space come and go. I just installed Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008 last night, and it removed 2007. Guessing there is a restore point with all of that data somewhere.

 

Wow thanks LaptopGuru, that did the trick. I just freed up 20GB of space lol. There is no option to delete individual restore points, or even to set how much space on the HD it can take up. It says "up to 15%".

The only way to delete the restore points is to delete all of them by un-checking the box next to the Local Drive C:/. Hope this helps others!

 

I always turn off system restore. It takes up space as you've seen and is constantly making restore points. I prefer to do a clean install, then make an image file which I can restore at any time if needed.

 

I just ran Disk Cleanup (All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Cleanup) and it lets you remove all but the most recent restore point. I saved 22GB as well. There needs to be a setting somewhere to limit this!! I may end up going mca's route and just turn this stupid feature off.