Missing Gigs After Installation?

rpurcell · 16 Feb 2011

Yes, I see. That much space for the system restore was just something I couldn't wrap my head around. I never even paid attention to it on my 2 year old computer with Vista. It's funny, seems like just yesterday that a 40 GB hard drive was considered a miracle of technology, nobody could even imagine having that much space. Now that's the standard size for the restore alone. Thanks very much for all this info and advice. It's good to know. I would also be interested in hearing anyone else's opinions about the amount of space that should be reserved for the system restore.

Thanks

whs · 16 Feb 2011

There is, of course, an alternative to system restore - and that is imaging. I make an image of my system partition and my data partition every day. I keep 1 weeks, and then 1 per month all the way back to the original installtion. I ue one internal and 2 external disk drives for that (not exclusively for images though - just image folders on each drive). That is the ultimate protection, but you have to manage the bit which takes a couple of minutes each day.

If you are intersted in that alternative, you may read/watch my 2 tutorials on the matter:

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...trategies.html
Imaging with free Macrium

That much space for the system restore was just something I couldn't wrap my head around.

As you already stated, it is in your head. You will probably never use the full capacity of your disk in the few years you own it.

Bare Foot Kid · 16 Feb 2011

Personally, I keep System Restore available space to around 4GB, restore points degrade as they age, besides if you need to do a system restore it's for something that just happened, not for something that happened 2 months ago.

Imaging is the better approach.

whs · 16 Feb 2011

Bare Foot Kid said:

Personally, I keep System Restore available space to around 4GB, restore points degrade as they age, besides if you need to do a system restore it's for something that just happened, not for something that happened 2 months ago.

Imaging is the better approach.

True, I keep them mainly on my data partition. I keep losing files at times and there they are the easiest to retrieve. And with acres of diskspace one has these days (except SSD), what do you lose.

rpurcell · 16 Feb 2011

That much space for the system restore was just something I couldn't wrap my head around.

As you already stated, it is in your head. You will probably never use the full capacity of your disk in the few years you own it.[/QUOTE]

I'll tell you a funny story about that. I bought one of those Western Digital external TB drives and dumped about 140 Gigs onto it. This was data that I had carefully collected for years. Something happened to the tiny mini port on the drive and now it's unreadable. Even though it powers up, it cannot connect. I honestly can't believe that WD would design a TB drive with only that one mini port. Paying a data recovery service is out of the question, so it looks like I've lost everything. WD told me they'd replace it, but that doesn't help me get my files back. So now I'm paranoid, and want to drop all of my remaining data onto the newest computer that I have, which is this one. At least with a computer you have many ports, and options to recover lost data. That's why I'm trying to free up as many Gigs as possible.

whs · 16 Feb 2011

For your WD problem - why don't you take the disk out and put it into an enclosure which they sell for less than $20. Is it a 2.5" or 3.5" disk?

rpurcell · 16 Feb 2011

I'm not sure what size it is. There's no way to open it without breaking the case, which would void the warranty. I figured I might as well get a replacement if I can. Then it wouldn't be a total loss. I'd like to know more about that enclosure though, I really want to recover that data.

Thanks

whs · 16 Feb 2011

You have to open the box in order to take the disk out - and there is certainly a way to do it. Once you have it out, you put it into an enclosure like this one which happens to be for 2.5" disks. They look like this.

A 3.5" disk looks like this. It has it's own power supply. An enclosure for the disk is like this.

I would get the disk out in any case. Your data is more valuable than the disk. Or ask WD to recover your data and put it on the new disk they are going to send you.

But even if they do not want to deal with you after you opened their box, you can still use the disk with the enclosure.

rpurcell · 17 Feb 2011

OK. Mine is a 3.5. WD already said they wouldn't recover the data. I'll look into that enclosure. Thanks a lot for that info.

whs · 17 Feb 2011

Nw you only have to figure out how to open the bugger.