Dump the lot!!!

[Grandpappy]

I'm having a hell of a lot of problems with my system ( Windows XP Home Edition ) with extra memory fitted and SP3 installed and I'm going to dump the lot and start from scratch.My C: drive (my main drive) is 150Gb and came with the system Dell Dimension 5150. My external drive H: is 250Gb Western Digital.
Now then!!! When I click on My Computer I see that C: is 149Gb and showing 104 Gb free and H: (my external drive) is 232Gb with 200Gb free. Now I thought I'd copied everything from C: to H: using the pedandtic copy and paste method , but the maths don't work!! How come C: is using up 45Gb of disc space ,but H: is only using up 32Gb when I thought I'd copied everything. Surely the operating system and all it's gubbins don't take up 13Gb.?? and if they do , does that mean I can now go ahead and delete everything on C: and re-install Windows with the disc that came in the box??

After you stop laughing can you offer any constructive advice ( keep it clean!) please.
Many thanks

[rojash]

One reason for a discrepancy would be if the cluster size was different for the two drives. My C drive has a cluster size of 16KB, whereas, checking my External Western Digital drive, I find it has a cluster size of 4KB. The larger the cluster size, the more space is likely to be wasted for each file. This will be particularly noticeable if you have lots of smaller files.

But also of course, you presumably didn't copy over all your programs (if you did, you were wasting your time, as they will all need to be re-installed if you are going to re-install Vista)

My Program files folder uses 25.8 GB

[Grandpappy]

Thanks for that Rojash, but I'm going to re-install Windows XP Home Edition, or at least, I HOPE I am.
Cheers

[rojash]

What I said still applies, though. If you clean install the operating system (whatever flavour) you will need to re-install the applications.