Vista eating up your hard drive, good or bad?
Okay this was my problem with my new tablet since I have it only 2 weeks or so. But with 120GB it has really is left only 29-31GB which means I used about 70 GB already (5.5GB is being separated to another partition). All my programs are like 20 programs or so, including heavy-weight stuffs like Microsoft Office 2007 (625MB), Thunderbird DB (600MB), Eclipse (330MB), Photoshop CS2(210MB), PC-Doctor-5(130MB)–bundled with my tablet–I’m not quite sure what is really is I’ll give it a shot first. However, all these programs, including Vista business, and my data, are only 30GB. So where the heck is another 30G?
Let’s see; I had tried with all my common sense and it came up with nothing; I felt like when I was finding the photos in my treo in FileZ; you couldn’t see whether they are in memory at all! (if you are using Palm NVFS-based device, try by yourself; you’ll see what I’m talking about) What I did is using Disk Cleanup, deleting all temp files, checking all the program that might related with backup/restore, turning off UAC, getting into safemode with admin account to find where that file is, and restarting many times. I still found no clue. You may see 2 figures below. That really conflicts with what my computer shown above!
I hadn’t known what the hidden 30GB file is until I googled it. I found that Vista has a whole new system of system restore, including new strange name–shadow copy storage. For Vista you couldn’t adjust how large the storage for system restore is by GUI anymore. It shows only a bit information, and a check box to turn on/off. So what does the system restore differ to the old one on XP? I can say that they are practically the same but, on Vista, it’s much more elegant and powerful (or too powerful, I guess)
“In Windows XP, System Restore uses a file system filter to keep track of system file changes. In Windows Vista, System Restore uses Volume Shadow Copy Service to keep track of block-level changes over the selected volumes.”
shadow copy service was introduced in Windows Server 2003, I believe. It uses for keep tracking all the data and copy in this backup disk (which is invisible) This service is totally automatically–meaning that you can do nothing about this. However, the maximum shadow storage will be set based on the actual volume or the free space after setting up. It’s usually up to 30% of free space or 15% the overall size of the volume. I found the typical computer has a maximum shadow storage about 15GB, but, frankly, my Thinkpad X61T doesn’t have the maximum value, how odd!!? UNBOUNDED–that’s what it set to mine. :-/
Anyway, you could check the used, allocated, and maximum shadow copy storage by run elevated command prompt (start | type “cmd” | right-click on cmd.exe and tap Run as administrator)
vssadmin list shadowstorage
In case you want to change the maximum shadow storage, you could use the command
VSSAdmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=15GB
While For is the volume you want to backup, On is the where the shadow space is, MaxSize is a maximum size you want. If you are shrinking the volume, you may lose your previous backup as well, just to beware.
Now you know what shadow copy storage is. Then you will know how you can take the advantage of this service and you’ll know how great this is. Practically, shadow will copy everything in every period you have changed anything to the disk. Thus, you will be able to restore what files/folders you want to be the way they were by easily right-click on that file/folder, then tap on “Restore previous versions”
then you will see tons of file/folder you want to restore in many points of time.
For me, with UNBOUNDED setting, I can roll up to the first day I got this tablet. The process is quite intuitive. I can’t wait to try Time Machine in Leopard to see how good it is though.
All in all, this is such a great feature but it can’t be great with *unbounded* setting for sure. You may try to find out how much shadow eating up your hard drive, then resize it. I have no idea why this happened, but, without this problem, I won’t know that there is something running underneath and duplicating all my stuffs. I have about 3 computers with Vista now, I haven’t found this bother me, perhaps it was set correctly. Therefore, I haven’t noticed this invisible volume. Finally, I can think of many situation that found this really great tool, like accidentally delete the important file, or a file was intentionally deleted, but I need that file back. As long as it doesn’t waste much space, it’s a fantastic feature.
ps. I don’t know if this bundled in Vista Home basic or premium or not, since these 2 don’t have restore/backup capability. I’ll let you know when I found out. But for Vista Business and Ultimate, you expect to have this
Edited on Jan 23, 2008: Vista Home Premium does have Shadow Storage feature. Thus I think there is no reason why Home Basic would not include this useful feature as well.
reference: How Volume Shadow Copy Service Works, Volume Shadow Copy Service Overview, Windows Vista Backup Technology
Popularity: 5% [?]
Network problem??
This is just the case I still wonder now what the cause really is. By the fact that there is 5 clients and 1 server in the network behind a router. All of clients are running Windows XP professional and the server runs Windows Server 2003 for file backing up and file server.
The problem is only one-pair of them has a problem. The computer x1 rarely sees the x3 one and sometimes x3 is accessible but with very sluggish speed–almost 2 minutes waiting just to browse the file in explorer. Nonetheless x1 is accessible on x3 perfectly.
You may want to know that any other pairs don’t have this problem. Even though x1 and server or with x5 or x3 with anyone. ping is good, time is less than 3 ms with anyone except the problem pair.
To alleviate the random problem like this, I really have no idea much. So, I have tried to change the file sharing to be more advanced and add the user ‘everyone’ and ‘administrator’ into the share permission. I forget to let you know that every single computer on the network uses ‘administrator’ as a login and they have the same password but the x3 one which normally use another user name as a login and administrator doesn’t have any password. However, I have changed the password of administrator to be the same as others already. For you guys who wonder about firewall on x3, it’s installed Norton Firewall and I did turn off to prevent a problem but frankly the problem was not gone.
But, then, it still has the same problem. I really frustrate with the windows network for the first time, not because it’s working or not working, but because the symptom happens randomly so I couldn’t figure out why it really is. When I go fixing, it seems works just fine. Nonetheless I use the alternative–set the x3 as a fixed IP–to solve this and it seems help.
After that, I haven’t heard they have a problem again which could mean two things: the problem was solved or they don’t believe me fixing that again :-/ ha ha ha if anyone passing by has any idea or else, please let me know. Thanks!
Popularity: 3% [?]
Is Windows Vista so expensive comparing to Mac OS X?
Comparing to the number one contender like Mac OS X, newest release–Leopard, Vista seems so expensive. But that’s just a thing you automatically agree by the word of media without thinking by yourself. Just thing about it thoroughly, do we buy Leopard retail version or do we buy an upgrade version of Mac OS X? By comparing the method of Microsoft selling their OS, if you consider Leopard as a retail version of Mac OS, it sounds like you can buy an apple computer without an OS. That’s the point of retail version. However, if you use one of Windows OS’s family, you can buy an upgrade box with the same features as the retail one except the price which is almost at bargain price.
Take a look at the price of both company:-
Mac OS X Leopard Home version: $129
Mac OS X Leopard Premium version: $129
Mac OS X Leopard Business version: $129
Mac OS X Leopard Ultimate version: $129
Mac OS X Leopard 5-licenses: $199
I really love & hate this Jobs’ joke at the same time. The fact is you can’t buy a Mac without an OS, so, to be fair, all this version should consider as an upgrade when we want to compare with Microsoft’s strategy. However, you could buy 1-license box around $100-$110 and $180 for 5-license box, if you just put enough effort on Google.
on Microsoft side:-
Vista Home Basic retail box $199.99
Vista Home Premium retail box $249.99
Vista Business retail box $299.99
Vista Ultimate retail box $399.99
Vista Home Basic upgrade box $99.99
Vista Home Premium upgrade box $144.99
Vista Business upgrade box $189.99
Vista Ultimate upgrade box $249.99
and surely the cheapest one, OEM version:-
Vista Home Premium OEM DVD $111.99
Vista Ultimate OEM DVD $179.99 (both 32-bit and 64-bit)
Vista Home Premium 3-license OEM DVD $329.99 (both 32-bit and 64-bit)
You may think Microsoft is so suck to have so many versions, 4, of Windows, but that’s just like a car. Not everyone wants to drive the fastest one like F1 or Ferrari which may consider as one of the most advanced engine and some just couldn’t bare sitting on compact car like Yaris. I think if you want to most powerful one, just go for Ultimate and then you will find Home Premium is enough.
Oh sorry I’m out of topic a bit. If you see the price really, you will find that Vista price is not so pain comparing to Leopard. And you know that there still is a way to get this cheaper, like the way you pay less for Leopard. The thing Apple is definitely better than Microsoft is they offer 5-license package for a low price. (I think I could install 1-license Tiger DVD on many computers though) Nonetheless, I couldn’t directly compare both Leopard & Vista because I don’t know what version of Vista should be equal to Leopard; you may think the Ultimate one but Leopard doesn’t have that much feature like Tablet-related features. Maybe Home premium is the one you could do that. So they are just not really differing from each other.
All in all, you know now both Microsoft and Apple are just the same. They both need money from us ha ha ha
ps. OEM version is just the way to pay less, only a DVD and COA sticker you need. Otherwise is the same.
Popularity: 2% [?]
