Two HDD Questions

Sony laptop, Win7, HPrem, 32bit, 250GB HDD (according to specs)

Computer states 194GB free of avail 223GB. Is this the norm ? After custom install, I have no factory bloatware, no documents, have only added Chrome, CC Cleaner, Real Player, Adobe Flash, Reader. Is something hiding on my HDD ? Win 7 should only take about 16GB, right ?

- Also, during first custom install I deleted Vista. Can it be recovered ? The second time I did custom install, Win 7 upgrade did not recognize previous Windows and I had to call Microsoft for activiation key. Would like to avoid calling in the future.

In summary, how do you evaluate what is on your HDD other than the listed programs under Windows, etc.

Is this OK ?

Every update you add to the system makes a backup. If you want, delete those and you`ll get some space back.

You can also install FileMenu Tools (FileMenu Tools), right-click a folder, and choose FileMenu Tools > Size of Folders. It will give you a sorted listing of all folders with sizes, and you can drill into the biggest ones to get more granular views of what's taking up so much space.

If it makes you feel any better, my OS is using 70 - 75 GB. 7 uses a lot more space than XP. One hog is the winsxs folder (Google).

Thanks for the above replies. Any other ideas ?

Also, as mentioned, I completely deleted Vista during clean install. Anyway to recover ? Thanks !

What`s the 8.96 GBs all about ?

Zomby88 said:

What`s the 8.96 GBs all about ?

It's the active partition so it'll contain the boot record and is probably the recovery partition too.

I was asking the poster. Silly