no hard drive space left after clean install of windows 7

[razman99]

Hello I have a 250gb hard drive on my computer...I had windows vista and just did a clean install of windows 7 professional...after completing the installation it shows that i only have 80 gb of space left on my hard drive??..I thought i would have well over 200gb left...I did a backup to an external hard drive...any possible answers would be appreciated...thanks in advance

 

[Elan]

Look for a folder named Windows.old (Desktop? C: Drive?)

In it you'll find most of the files that were on the drive before you upgraded... Delete everything in it that you don't need.

 

[razman99]

I did look for that file in the search option in the start menu and nothing came up.

 

[Elan]

I did look for that file in the search option in the start menu and nothing came up.

Sorry for the misinformation then... It does that when I reinstall Win7 so I guessed it would do it for Vista too... I would open explorer and start checking the folder sizes until I see what is using up all the space...

 

[razman99]

Ok thanks....I will give that a try...thanks again for your help.

 

[gregrocker]

Boot the Win7 installer, select Custom Install, then Drive Options, delete all partitions, create new ones as you wish, then format before installing Win7 to first partition.

Or you can use the Drive Options to delete all partitions and just click Next and the installer will auto-create and format one large partition and begin install.

Illustrated steps here: Clean Install Windows 7

 

[razman99]

Thank you for the response but I was hoping to avoid re-installing windows 7 again seeing that I just got everything back up and running on my computer...I am limited on time to work on this plus my wife needs the network up and running in my house for her job...If nothing else works then I will eventually do what you suggested...thanks again

 

[Arc]

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/129976-hard-disk-space-free-up-recover.html

Have a look .

 

[gregrocker]

Please post back a screenshot of your maximized Disk management drive map, using the Snipping Tool in Start Menu: Screen Shots

 

[razman99]

Hey guys thank you for your help...I searched for the windows.old files again and found them this time...not sure why they weren't there the first time...103gb in there...wow...also deleted the old system restore files and got another 30gb there...everything is good to go now...just want to thank you and let you know this a great site and you guys were a big help.

 

[gregrocker]

Do not turn off System Restore, or throw the spare tire out of your car.

 

[Spendlove]

Here's a new one for you...

To avoid any risk of deleting any files, I decided to install my new Windows 7 OS on a new hard drive. I unplugged my old hard drive. Unplugged both power and SATA cable.

I installed it on the new drive, and everything seemed to be going well, but I had a look at my computer's properties showing that I had 35.1 GB free of 579 GB on the drive. The drive is a 2TB drive. The 579GB is referencing the OLD hard drive size, which is STILL UNPLUGGED.

A. How would the new OS know of the old OS drive size?
B. Is there a drive size limitation? (however archaic it would seem given the size of new hard drives and current state of the 64bit Windows 7 OS)
C. Why would it report, on the same OS, at the same time, in "computer" and "computer management"... TWO DIFFERENT SIZES OF THE SAME PARTITION?
D. Why would the drive be full after ONE DAY worth of installation of Win7 and Photoshop. There are no movies, photos or other large space consumers on the drive, just the installation. It took nearly two years to fill it that full on Vista with videos, photos, etc...
E. Sorry for the cross-posting. Delete or move where necessary.