I recently had a new hard drive which was partitioned in two equal halves with XP Pro OS on C and most of my programs on D (all data on second HD). It's an 80 Gb drive with NTFS file system on both C & D, but, to my surprise I find that almost 2Gb of C and almost 2Gb of D are taken up with reserved system space. Why is this here? I've never seen any reserved system space when using FAT32 file systems. What is more puzzling is how there is all that reserved system space on D which has only my programs on it and no OS files. Can anyone clarify this and if it is not needed tell me how I can regain this lost space taken up by reserved system space.
Don't worry about it.... I am assuming that you are running some version of Xp? If so, do make sure you change the size of System Restore (it takes 12% of a HD by default) and also resize your recycle bin. If you use IE7 lessen the amount of available disk space that temp internet files use too.
Now that's interesting. Yes, I'm using XP Pro and have been for some time, however, I've never seen reserved system space like this when using the FAT32 file system so I presume it is to do with the NTFS file system. I was told to reduce the size of the recycle bin to reduce the reserved system space, but, that didn't seem to make any difference. It never occurred to me that Systems Restore would create reserved system space as it never did with FAT32, but, now I think about it I only have Systems Restore activated on C and D which is where the Reserved System Space is and the amount taken up does seem to be equivalent to what is set. I suppose space reserved for the System Restore files is preferable to when it was just written to anywhere on the partition as it does reduce fragmentation on the partition. Thanks, wish the shop that did my upgrades could have been more explicit when I asked them about it
You're welcome for the help. Go to www.pcpitstop.com and run a test on your system...tests are in the left margin section of the home page. The tests offer some good insight as to which settings (if any?) that may need to be improved upon. Also, www.tweakxp.com can be a handy site too. Good stuff.
