Thinkpad W520 - Hard drive full

[jvidal]

Hi,

I just bought a Thinkpad W520 which has two internal hard drives. The first is faster and is about 80 Go and the second is about 320 go. The first one is divided into the lenovo backup drive (Q and Windows (C. The latest has 58 Go available. However, without having installed anything on my computer yet, the computer tells me the harddrive is almost full and has only 6 Go free. So I would like to know if that is normal? Considering the fact that I haven't installed anything on it yet... I supposed when i decided to buy it, the interest to have two hard drives with a main one faster was to be able to install the programs into it so I'm quite surprised to find no space at all on it...

Thanks for the help, Jorge

[jvidal]

I must add I have windows 7 64bit which recquires "only" 20go (according to microsoft website) of the 58 go of my hardrive. This leaves 32 go full of programs and only 6 free. It seems weird to me that other programs apart of windows 7 could fill the hard drive for 32 Go...

[w520user999 · Accepted solution]

If you have 16 G memory, thats a 16G hibernation file, and a large page file, plus any system restore points....

[jvidal]

Yeah I do have 16 Go RAM. I checked and the files you mention are that big. Thanks. However, I would like to understand why the RAM takes space in the hard drive? Just being curious...

[w520user999]

When your system goes into hibernation, Windows writes a complete copy of RAM to the file hiberfil.sys

You can turn off hibernation-- learn how here.

If your computer lacks the random access memory (RAM) needed to run a program or operation, Windows uses virtual memory to compensate. Virtual memory combines your computer’s RAM with temporary space on your hard drive. When RAM runs low, virtual memory moves data from RAM to a space called a paging file. Moving data to and from the paging file frees up the RAM to complete its work. 

You can reduce the page file-- learn how here.

Also try running disk cleanup.

[jvidal]

Thanks for everything! Your explanations are way more useful than Lenovo's support service...