Brownies is long over for me. I really didn't collect a lot of badges. In fact, there are about 6 that remain sadly baste-stitched to the Inspector Gadget-like uniform.
I don't care anymore! Why? Because I just earned my GEEK badge. That's right. We lost 42 GB on our hard drive. No one could figure it out. The only thing in this life I have not given up is research. I love to research mysteries. Not murder mysteries that are cryptic and involve anatomical diagrams and multiple characters. I love to look at money laundering maps, solve mutual fund mysteries when clients get phantom deposits of over $8 million dollars, and missing gigabytes. I did it and I really learned a lot from these techy forums with words like BIOS and OS and Oompa Loompa. I'll teach you a trick too about Windows XP. Are you ready?
Cleaning up your hard drive is one thing. But, what if you are missing massive amounts of information that has gradually dwindled day by day? Yeah! Well, that was me. We got to the point that we had to remove all our documents, photos, music, movies, and files that I figured caused no harm! Windows XP regularly does a system restore. In the language of the non-geek, that means the "system" backs itself up and stores this information on the hard drive, over and over and over and over! All of these system restores are there in the event that something really bad happens and you have to restore your system. But it takes so many snapshots over time. Most systems are set to do the restore using the maximum amount of disk space allowed. This maximum is set at 12% of your hard disk space for a system restore. Each time! So, if you had a 100 GB hard drive, each system restore could potentially store up to 12 GB. This is where our hard drive was being vacuumed up. Our 60GB was set at 12% for system restores which equals about 7 GB. So, what to do? First, set your system restore disk space usage lower. This is how.
Click on Start
Click on Control Panel
Click on System (under Performance & in Category view)
Click on the System Restore tab
See the little sliding bar. Well slide it over to the left. I slid ours to 1%
What if you are missing 40 GB like me? I don't recommend that you do this. But I did it. In that same System Restore window, you'll see a ticky box that says "Turn Off System Restore". I clicked it and then I clicked apply. It took a few minutes because it freed up 42 GB to be exact. I went back in and turned it back on (remove the checkmark in the ticky box "Turn off System Restore", click apply again!). Voila! There it was. I had 46 GB free. Free GB. Not 4.6 GB. No, no, no! I have 46 glorious gigabytes free on my hard drive. I actually went into my daughter's room and woke up my husband who was trying to get her to sleep. *Steve* was snoring and *Mila* was reading him a Grimm Brothers' fairy tale. I woke him up and we had a geek family high-five. Is that how geek families celebrate? I'm going to make gigabyte cupcakes tomorrow, I'm so giddy with mommy-geek gigabytes.
signed, the willow
I don't care anymore! Why? Because I just earned my GEEK badge. That's right. We lost 42 GB on our hard drive. No one could figure it out. The only thing in this life I have not given up is research. I love to research mysteries. Not murder mysteries that are cryptic and involve anatomical diagrams and multiple characters. I love to look at money laundering maps, solve mutual fund mysteries when clients get phantom deposits of over $8 million dollars, and missing gigabytes. I did it and I really learned a lot from these techy forums with words like BIOS and OS and Oompa Loompa. I'll teach you a trick too about Windows XP. Are you ready?
Cleaning up your hard drive is one thing. But, what if you are missing massive amounts of information that has gradually dwindled day by day? Yeah! Well, that was me. We got to the point that we had to remove all our documents, photos, music, movies, and files that I figured caused no harm! Windows XP regularly does a system restore. In the language of the non-geek, that means the "system" backs itself up and stores this information on the hard drive, over and over and over and over! All of these system restores are there in the event that something really bad happens and you have to restore your system. But it takes so many snapshots over time. Most systems are set to do the restore using the maximum amount of disk space allowed. This maximum is set at 12% of your hard disk space for a system restore. Each time! So, if you had a 100 GB hard drive, each system restore could potentially store up to 12 GB. This is where our hard drive was being vacuumed up. Our 60GB was set at 12% for system restores which equals about 7 GB. So, what to do? First, set your system restore disk space usage lower. This is how.
Click on Start
Click on Control Panel
Click on System (under Performance & in Category view)
Click on the System Restore tab
See the little sliding bar. Well slide it over to the left. I slid ours to 1%
What if you are missing 40 GB like me? I don't recommend that you do this. But I did it. In that same System Restore window, you'll see a ticky box that says "Turn Off System Restore". I clicked it and then I clicked apply. It took a few minutes because it freed up 42 GB to be exact. I went back in and turned it back on (remove the checkmark in the ticky box "Turn off System Restore", click apply again!). Voila! There it was. I had 46 GB free. Free GB. Not 4.6 GB. No, no, no! I have 46 glorious gigabytes free on my hard drive. I actually went into my daughter's room and woke up my husband who was trying to get her to sleep. *Steve* was snoring and *Mila* was reading him a Grimm Brothers' fairy tale. I woke him up and we had a geek family high-five. Is that how geek families celebrate? I'm going to make gigabyte cupcakes tomorrow, I'm so giddy with mommy-geek gigabytes.
signed, the willow
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