Windows 7: Recovery Drive D: almost full in one week

I've been using my new notebook since last week. The allotted space for the Recovery drive D is 13G. After a week, I suddenly noticed that it is now almost full, with only 1.46G free. When I open the drive, I only see recovery folder (16KB) and HPSF_rep text document (4KB). When I viewed protected program files in that drive, I saw a lot of files which I did not dare to modify or anything.

What should I do? What will happen if D: becomes full?

Welcome Ann to the Seven Forums.

As far as I know when working on a computer nothing gets added or removed from the recovery partition by default. Do you remember how much stuff was there when you first got the computer. Actually 11 gigabytes of data is quite normal for a Recovery Partition for HP Computers.

Check whether any shadows were written in that partition. The command is:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

I actually cannot remember what the original free space was when I first opened it. I just noticed it today after I noticed that a Q drive mysteriously appeared. But if you think it's quite normal, then maybe it would be ok.

BTW, will it reach a point of being totally full (how?) and what will happen if it does become full? Thank you for the replies.

Hi Ann,

Please check the volume of data after a day or two to find out if it has changed.
If it hasn't then things are OK.

Amarnath Wanchoo

If data is filling the drive, most likely it is due to either backup files or other files being downloaded to the D partition. Check your default settings for backup and download location.

You can download a free utility "Folder Size" which will provide drive storage data in an easy to read GUI, and a quick way to see the files and folders located in the D partition.

Download site for Folder Size;

Folder Size - Freeware file size analysis. Check the directory sizes, folder sizes and file sizes on your computer with this freeware tree size analysis tool.

HTH

I agree with Wanchoo, nothing should be writting to the recovery drive also you wouldn't expect a recovery partition to carry much more than the recovery image.

1. did you check whether there were shadows

2. the Q drive is a virtual partition. It may have come from an Office 2010 installation. When you rboot, it should disappear.

3. nothing happens when the partition is full. The program that writes to it will not be happy and will tell you.

Make your Recovery disks now which will tell you if the partition is corrupted.

The sizes you gave look wrong. What are the actual sizes of the folders. The other folder besides Recovery looks suspect. Post back a Screen Shot of the content after unhiding System and Hidden files in Control Panel>Folder Options>View tab.

This is also dealt with here: Error: Low Disk Space. You are running out of disk space on Recovery (D - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

As you have an HP which has the worst load of factory bloatware in the industry, you should also Clean Up Factory Bloatware

In addition to my prior post, how about checking this out;

Since it is a fact that the D drive, in this case, shouldn't be written to; First I'd disable SYSTEM RESTORE to it. Go to CONTROL PANEL, SYSTEM, SYSTEM PROTECTION on left side, select D: on the bottom pane and CONFIGURE to turn it off.

Then I'd look to see what files had the DATE changed to be today/yesterday and figure out the file(s) being written. With that info, you should be able to determine the cause. It might have been nothing more than a restore point being created on boot or after installing a program?

The advice in my first post can be beneficial as well...