x230t with 128SSD, but only 96.1 GB available (and 41.7GB free)??

[LenovoVCU]

Hello,

Like the title says, I have an x230t with 128SSD (only programs installed are norton and microsoft office/student ed.) and out of the box only 96.1 GB available. Even worse, of that only 41.7 GB is free. 

I have close to 7GB of personal data on here... so what is taking over 50GB of space? also.. how come around 30GB isn't available? (doesn't this seem like too much?)

Thanks

[LenovoVCU]

Ok... I found the "lenovo recovery" drive that states:

"Lenovo has provided a copy of the original factory preloaded software in this partition. For convenience, this utility allows you to recover this space once you have made a copy of this partition to DVD..."

This drive is about 15GB large, which accounts for some... but I'm still searching for the 50GB used on my main drive that I can't figure out yet...

[someotherguy]

The 128GB SSD is actually only about 119GB.  Don't ask me why, it's a stupid marketing gimmick that the storage vendors play.

The recovery partition (Q is 15GB or so.  Open "My Computer", double-click on Q, and click the button to create the recovery media.  Then you can click the other button to recover the drive space.

The new systems like X230T (and the other 30-series systems) also include a 8GB hibernation partition which works with the new 30-day standby feature of Power Manager.  Basically the system will suspend to disk after several hours of sleeping, which lets your battery stay charged for up to 30 days in sleep mode.  And the resume is much faster than traditional hibernate, and can be triggered by opening the lid.  If you don't care about this feature, and instead want to delete the hibernation partition and recover that drive space, let me know and I can help walk you through that.

So, in summary, your 128SSD is really only 119GB, minus 15GB recovery partition, minus 8GB hibernation partition - this leaves 96GB for your C:\ drive.

[LenovoVCU]

thank you for the quick response. the "119GB" with 8GB and 15GB allocated as you described makes sense. 

however, for the 96GB remaining, how come there is ~55GB used? (only ~41GB free)?

[someotherguy]

How much RAM is in your system?  If you have 8GB, the Windows page file and Windows hibernation file will take a total of 16GB.

[LenovoVCU]

I have 8 GB RAM"... at least that explains part of it.... but there is still a significant amount I'm trying to track down. Any other ideas?

[someotherguy]

It seems like it is all accounted for?  

C: drive is 96GB

OS & preloaded apps are probably around 30GB of that, just guessing but it's somewhere in that ballpark.

16GB for page file and hibernation file

you said you had 7GB of personal data

96 - 30 - 16 - 7 = ~43GB free?

As I mentioned there are several options for reclaiming some of the space.  Start with making the recovery media and restoring the space taken by Q: drive...

[LenovoVCU]

the 30 GB of preloaded apps is 'what I can't find... I went through the program files, etc... and couldn't find anything near 30 GB. (thanks again for your patience.)

[LenovoVCU]

Hello,

were you able to find any informatoin about this 30GB of unaccounted space?

I wouldn't have selected the 128SSD option if I knew I would only have 40-50GB free.

Thanks,

[someotherguy]

Sorry for my late reply.  I just configured a X230t with 128GB SSD and here are my findings about it:

1.  the SSD is actually only 119.24 GB due to marketing BS where they claim 1GB is 1 billion bytes instead of 1.074 billion bytes.  The end result is that the SSD capacity is actually 7.4% less than advertised.  This is something that the HDD/SDD vendors do in their technical specs, and I don't know why.

2.  1.46 GB is reserved as a System Partition, which contains things necessary to boot Windows, do System Restores, and also Factory Recovery.

3.  13.67 GB is reserved for the Factory Recovery partition (Q drive).  As I mentioned you can easily recover this space by clicking on the Q drive (after creating your recovery media).

4.  8 GB is reserved for a hibernation partition, for the purpose of 30-day standby.  I can help you recover this space if you want.

This leaves 59.9 GB free (of 96.1 GB) on the C drive, which means 36.2 GB of the C drive is in use without any personal data or apps on the system:

a.  the "C:\Windows" folder is 15.2 GB 

b.  the "C:\Program Files" folder is 1.34 GB

c.  the "C:\Program Files (x86)" folder is 3.10 GB

d.  the "C:\swtools" folder is 4.94 GB

e.  the hibernation file (c:\hiberfil.sys) is around 6 GB  (assuming you have 8GB of RAM)

f.  the pagefile (c:\pagefile.sys) is around 8 GB (assuming you have 8GB of RAM)

a-f adds up to about 38 GB and due to how Windows adds up in-use HDD space, everything is accounted for.

Here are some things you can do to increase free space, if you want to:

1.  click on the Q drive, create your recovery media, and then recover the drive space (13.67 GB reclaimed)

2.  delete the "C:\swtools" folder  (4.94 GB reclaimed)

3.  turn off Windows hibernation if you don't use it (6-8 GB reclaimed)

4.  delete the hibernation partition if you don't care about 30-day standby  (8 GB reclaimed)