All your PC problems, Volume 2

botond

in scsi mode it works simple whit xp
for sata i need to install the drivers?
the hdd is sata ....so sata mode must work better,yes?

redmanc

Yes but you need the sata drivers, easily obtained from manufacturers website, i.e. DELL, stick in the tag number on the back and it will list all the stuff you need to get it working.

botond

i know where the drivers are ,and everything
i just need some evidence for this smart fucker that sata is the smarter choice

Ole_Gunnar

My laptop has an 80GB HDD, divided into two equal paritions. However, they both show as having only 33GB of capacity each, but that's a side issue. One of the paritions 'D' is empty, the other 'C', has all the information. Recently it's been saying the drive is full, however, there is very little on it. I've gone through intensive checks, deleted alot of files and software. This is a problem because it was nowhere near full before. There is also no AV software and just the windows firewall...

redmanc

You just tell him its a SATA disk not a scsi one, if he fails to see that then i really wouldnt want him touching it as he clearly hasn't got two braincells to rub together.

redmanc

Download a program called Disk Frontier, it will tell you how much info is in each folder, so you can see where the problem is, whether you can find it or not windows won't lie about its disk space unless you have a virus, seeing as you have no av software i'd seriously consider getting one and running a full scan of your system asap.

Ole_Gunnar

Thanks, I've seen Norton Internet Security 2008 half price somewhere...

redmanc

http://www.freebyte.com/antivirus/#scanners

Free virus software.

VII

Norton is without a doubt the worst of the worst... - I can't even call it an antivirus - out there.

There are millions of free antiviruses programs out there that are thousands of times more effective.

I wouldn't even use norton even if they pay me. Seriously.

In fact I'll rather cut off my testicles than to even consider using norton.

UnitedRoadRed

AVAST is free - but I believe that it's got 33% off today only.

VidaRed

kaspersky internet security is the best.

Ole_Gunnar

Bought Mcafee, it found nothing. I downloaded AVG, it found nothing. There's definitely something wrong because it's saying my MMC card is nearing capacity when theres' only a handful of photos on it, it also says the D:/ partition has used up over 1 gig when it's completely empty...

redmanc

What operating system are you running?

redmanc

I did some googling for you and found this if its Vista, some also applies to XP.

So where does the space go?

Volume Shadow Copy: This is biggest reason for "missing" space in Vista! Instead of explaining it myself, I'll quote wikipedia:
Quote:
Shadow Copy (also called Volume Snapshot Service or VSS) is a feature in recent versions of Microsoft Windows that allows taking manual or automatic backup copies or snapshots of a file or folder on a specific volume at a specific point in time. It is used by NTBackup and the Volume Shadow Copy service to backup files. In Windows Vista, it is used by Windows Vista's backup utility, System Restore and the Previous Versions feature.

This service can be very useful, and is a good idea to keep it enabled. However, it does eat disk space. A LOT of disk space. By default it allocates %15 of the disk to store it's data. On a 160GB disk, that's 24GB! A lot of people have been noticing that after a few weeks of using their new system, free space seems to shrink daily. This is because the space is not allocated right away, only when it's needed. It will stop when it reaches %15. At that point, it will delete older versions to make room for newer ones. For all the details about Shadow Copy, read this article at ZDNet for a really good explanation.

Marketing Many people notice missing space right when they open the box. They bought a system with a 160GB hard drive, but Windows shows the total drive capacity as 149GB. That's a difference of 11GB right off the bat. The reason for this has to do with how you measure capacity to begin with. We measure bytes using progressively larger sizes, starting with K (kilobytes), M (megabytes), G (gigabytes), each one standing for a multiple of 1000. So 1K = 1,000, 1M = 1,000,000 (1000 * 1000), and 1G = 1,000,000,000 (1000 * 1000 * 1000). These are the units that companies use when they advertise the size of their disks, so your 160GB drive is 160,000,000,000 bytes in these measurements.

However, computers are binary systems, and measuring in multiples of 1000 isn't the way they do things. The closest thing we have in binary is 1024. So, for a computer, 1K = 1,024, 1M = 1,048,576 (1024 * 1024), and 1G = 1,073,741,824 (1024 * 1024 * 1024). As a result of this, a computer thinks that 1GB is bigger than what a person typically refers to as 1GB (a difference of 73,741,824 bytes). If we take our example of a disk that's advertised as 160GB, and divide by what a computer thinks is 1GB, we wind up with: 160,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 = 149.012, which is what Windows says is the drive capacity.

This measurement makes it seem like the drive is smaller, which is the reason I call this "marketing". Everyone wants to make their drives seem bigger, so they use the larger number, even if it's not exactly accurate.

Because of this confusion, new standards of measurement have been devised to help clear this up. Officially, the term "megabyte" refers to 1,000,000 bytes (1000 * 1000), and the term "mebibyte" refers to 1,048,576 bytes (1024 * 1024). The abbreviation for "megabyte" is "MB", like you're used to, and for a "mebibyte" it's "MiB". Notice the "i" in there. It's subtle, but important to make the distinction. You probably won't see these units in use by large companies for a while, but it's something you should be aware of anyway. See mebibyte for more information.

Here's a table comparing the "marketing" size vs. the computer size for some typical drive sizes:

Marketing Computer
80 GB 74.51 GiB
100 GB 93.13 GiB
120 GB 111.76 GiB
140 GB 130.39 GiB
160 GB 149.01 GiB
200 GB 186.26 GiB
250 GB 232.83 GiB
300 GB 279.39 GiB
320 GB 298.02 GiB
350 GB 325.96 GiB
400 GB 372.53 GiB


Essential System Files Another thing that can use up a lot of disk space are some essential system files, specifically, the pagefile and the hibernation file. The pagefile is part of the virtual memory system, and is required by the system to function correctly. It can take up to a few gibibytes of space, 1GiB - 4GiB, depending on how much RAM you have in the system. The other file, "hiberfil.sys", is used to save the state of your system when you hibernate it. This file is about as large as the amount of RAM you have, and is required for hibernation to work. If you disable hibernation, this space should get freed-up, but then you won't be able to hibernate.

Temporary/Working Files Here's another place that space gets eaten quickly. I recently cleared out my temp folder, and found almost 1GiB of data in there. Since this stuff really is "temporary" data, it's pretty safe to delete. A lot of this comes from installer programs -- when you install new stuff it decompresses data into the temp space. Other files that fall into this category are things like temporary internet files, the index for disk searching, thumbnail cache for thumbnails that show up when you view a folder of pictures or videos, etc... Usually you can use the "Disk Cleanup" wizard to clean this stuff out. If you clean it out, it's probably a good idea to reboot.

C:\Windows Then, of course, there's Vista itself. Vista can take 6GiB or more on the system. That's not terribly huge, but it is there. Of course, it's sort of required for your system to run, so there's not much you can do about it .

Recovery Partition Many, if not most new systems these days come with a "recovery partition" on the disk. This partition often contains all of the software necessary to restore your system to the factory default state. They put it there so if you have serious problems with your software, you can, as a last resort, recover from it. However, this process will delete all of your data.

The partition can be anywhere from about 5-10GiB, but it can vary. There are ways to get rid of it and reclaim that space, but never do so unless you have burned the "recovery discs" onto some DVDs first. The process to make recovery discs should be detailed in the documentation of your system. Once that is done, you can delete the partition, then expand your C: partition to use that space.

Copies of Installation Media Chances are if you copied some DVDs to your hard disk yourself, you know about it. But there's another way this can happen. Your OEM may have copied the entire contents of the Vista Installation disc to your hard drive. This is useful if you want to perform an Anytime Upgrade because Vista will need those files to perform the upgrade. However, that's going to take up a few GiB of space on your disk. If you can find this folder, sometimes called "WAU", you can safely burn this to a DVD and then delete the folder. Even better would be to make a bootable disc that you can use. You can use vLite (freeware) to burn this type of disc.

Another program that does this is Microsoft Office. When you install Office, it copies the entire contents of the disc onto your hard drive. Unfortunately you cannot remove it, as these files are needed when you do an Office update.

One way you can track down what's taking a lot of space is by using an open source tool like windirstat. Don't go deleting stuff you don't know what it is! Many are the stories of people who reorganized "this c:\windows thing" and for some reason their systems didn't boot anymore!

One principle to keep in mind is that free space can be considered wasted space. If you don't need that space now, let Windows use it for temp files, indexing databases, volume shadow copy, etc... so you can get the benefit of those services. Only when you need that space should you worry about deleting those things.

PS, i didnt write all that, some guy on some randomly googled page did

Ole_Gunnar

Thanks, I'm on Vista.

redmanc

Have a read of the above and see if the shadow volume copy is where your disk space is heading, its more than likely part of your issue.

Derek Brown

Hi Guys

I've just bought a laptop which is WiFi enabled. I've already had some help on here so thought I'd try for some more!! Basically, with computers, I'm a dickhead so any help should be in plain English PLEASE!

If I had a USB 3g card thingy (for internet access while mobile) would I also need a Wireless Router for when I'm working at home or in a clients house, or could I just simply plug the USB card in wherever I am and get the connection that way? Seems a bit silly to buy another piece of kit if I've got the card thing already.

Any assistance from you extremely knowleable peeps would be much appreciated. THANKS.

redmanc

The laptop with wireless is good for connecting to home networks/hotspots etc.

The 3g USB card is good for when you are on the move/mobile.

Derek Brown

Thanks, red. So, what you suggest is that it would pay me to have both and carry the wireless router everywhere with me for use when sationery and use the card when mobile. Any suggestions re a router? The OS is Vista and there's a 56k modem.

VidaRed

if you have a usb card plugged in and configured then it would automatically search for wifi ports and connect (if there are any)

i have this...and i just plug it in and it connects automatically

http://www.x-micro.com/main-product-54usbadapter.html

redmanc

Nope, the router is what stays at your home and feeds your broadband connection to any wireless device within range, obviously it will be security enabled so only people in your home can access it. It stays at home at all costs.

The wireless on your laptop can also connect to hotspots, provided either freely or pay/charge, most noteable ones are ones like Macdonalds, Train Stations and Airports.

The 3G is purely when you're on the move, i.e. you're on the train, in the middle of nowhere etc

Another option is that if you're at home and no one else needs the internet whatsoever, dont bother with home broadband and just take out a decent contract with a 3G datacard supplier, i know vodafone do a few decent heavy usage tarrifs.

Derek Brown

What sort of cost are we talking for one of those? Is it a contract thing or pay as you go? What sort of useage criteria does it have?

redmanc

Its just a card version of the wireless adapter thats built in to your laptop, you don't need it.

PS. Stop confusing him you cnuts.

Derek Brown

Thanks, red. I've been looking at the T-mobile contract that costs £20 pm with free USB card or you can pay £4 per day and the card costs £99. I think the monthly contract would be better as I can then use it as much as I want to. My mobile contract is with O2 and I won't get rid of that 'cos it's a cracking deal, but they don't seem to have any decent deals for what I'm now looking to do. I'll have a look at the Vodafone site and see what they're offering.

What, in your opinion, is a good wireless router to get?

redmanc

A wireless router for home would be a netgear one, its ADSL you have right?

Derek Brown

I think so. Tiscali Broadband.

redmanc <