I can answer the first part at least Indy:

 

There are actually quite a few free defragmenters out there.

First of all, there's Diskeeper Lite.

Another decent one is Auslogics Disk Defrag.

JKDefrag, Ultra Defrag, and SpeeDefrag are the other I know of :smileywink:

 

 

I'll leave suggestions for the missing hard drive space to one of the experts.

My only thought is that it might be hidden system files which are consuming it?

Thanks for getting back have installed auslogics disk defrag and ran it, much better can see what disk defragmenter is doing now and when its done.

 

Im slightly more puzzeled now on the missing GB as that defrag tool says Ive got 291GB of 370GB while Vista still says 285GB of 370GB.

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@Indy89 wrote:

Im slightly more puzzeled now on the missing GB as that defrag tool says Ive got 291GB of 370GB while Vista still says 285GB of 370GB.

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Right click on My computer

Click manage

Click Disk Management

 

That'll tell you the exact partition configuration you have. Come back with this information. 

I have it set up as Dell sent it to me which is 2x 200GB HDD in raid 0, theres a partition of 9.99GB labeled Recovery and then C:drive with 360GB of total space.

Regarding the disk defragmenter part: many of the older defragmenters will not work properly with Vista. I strongly recommend that you opt for defraggers that were specifically engineered to work with Vista's (sometimes quirky) features. For eg, defragmenting Vista with some older defraggers may cause deletion of old restore points and loss of shadow copies.

 

I personally use Diskeeper 2008 on Vista, and defrag it using the VSS compatible mode. It's not free, but it has lots of features and works really well. You download free trial versions from the Diskeeper site.

 

As for the free space issue, i am not 100% sure, but could be that Vista considers shadow copies of files (previous versions) as occupied free space, while the free defragger you tried does not. Just guessing here.

 

Enjoy your XPS, it's a fine laptop and a real joy to use.:smileyhappy:

 

 

Here is what it shows. Thanks for helping out.

 

 

How do I view hidden folders in Vista? Not that im going to go messing with them would just like to view them see if I can find one thats large, if there is one.

Thanks for the reply Narind. Will have a look at that defrag program. Vista is certainly reading something to show all that space being used up as I arnt using anywhere near that amount of space.

Thanks sure am enjoying this latop, sure is a fine computer. Its certainly capable of doing anything I throw at it with ease. Just this missing hard drive space thats puzzeling me, im sure ill get to the bottom of it in the end. 

I thought there might have been unallocated space on your hard drive.

Have you tried running Disk clean up? It seems Vista hogs a LOT of space with its system restore points.

http://www.jason-preston.com/index.php/2007/06/25/missing-hard-drive-space-in-windows-vista/

It's another thing to add to my long list of reasons why not to use Vista. :smileyvery-happy:

I envy you with that M1730, I'd love one for LAN gaming sessions but the €4000 price tag is waaay over my limit for a laptop...