Trying to get more space on HDD...found UNKNOWN area?

[Guttboy]

Hi Everyone.....

Been trying to clean out my HDD on my laptop. Deleted several of the older games I dont play and been cleaning out crapola that I dont use. I am using windirstat.exe to show what is the largest area on my HDD and I have an area that shows up as UNKNOWN...it is almost 4gb. I am running Win XP Pro. Any thoughts as to what this is??????

Regards:)

[d44ve]

where exactly does it show this area?

[kwchang007]

maybe it's a back up partition?

[LiNKiN]

Could it be possible that area is System Restore?

[Guttboy]

Ok gotta run windirstat again...then ill let you know the location if it finds it.....brb

[d44ve]

a recovery partition maybe?

[von kain]

there is a nice tool is the space monger http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/v1x.php its free and you can find a lot of files that you dont really need

[Guttboy]

Ok here is what it says....the <Unknown> area is on the C: root....no sub folder and it is 3.7 gig. I also have a pagefile.sys at 2.5 gig and a hiberfil.sys at 1 gig.

Any suggestions?????

[ex_reven]

Been trying to clean out my HDD on my laptop. Deleted several of the older games I dont play and been cleaning out crapola that I dont use. I am using windirstat.exe to show what is the largest area on my HDD and I have an area that shows up as UNKNOWN...it is almost 4gb. I am running Win XP Pro. Any thoughts as to what this is??????

maybe its a part that could not be partitioned?

[d44ve]

you can adjust the pagefile.... 2.5 gb is a bit on the high side for having 1.5gb ram

[Guttboy]

what is it? The pagefile that is... I think I set it to run America's Army to allow better performance but unsure...its been a while

[d44ve]

start -> control panel -> system -> advanced tab -> "performance" settings -> "advanced" tab -> "change"

It is an area on the hard drive that windows uses as "ram" ....somewhat

[Guttboy]

So what is the optimal pagefile to have with this laptop...sorry this is NOT the one in my specs....

Dell Inspiron 1705
Intel T2500 @ 2.00 Ghz
1.00 GB of Ram 997 Mhz

above infor taken from My computer....

[d44ve]

what is it set at now?

[Guttboy]

Page file is set at 2560 MB right now

[d44ve]

I would set it to 500mb min. - 1gb max

See how the computer runs.... If you get "Out a Vitual Memory" errors... you will need to re-adjust it.

Seeing as you hav 1gb of RAM, I would think you will be fine with that.

That will free you up 1.5 gb at least

[keakar]

windows sets up a small partition to use as a backup file for system restore to be able to let you "recover" your computer after you have a problem.

it is necessary to be a seperate partition so it is not "corrupted" by whatever happened to cause you to need to restore in the first place. even if you manage to remove it, windows will redo the partition. this tiny partition never shows up on purpose or someone would notice it and try to remove it, in which case it would disable system restore if you could.

its just part of windows so its ok to ignore it. setting system restore to use only 1gb or 1000mb will save you memory too. it cuts your restore dates down from 15 to about 7 which shouldn't be a problem unless you wait more than a week to fix problems with the computer lol.

EDIT: to help keep your system clean you should open your control panel then click on internet options then select advanced and towards the bottom of the list select "empty temp internet files when browser is closed" this will keep your system clean of leftover crap and save memory too.