[KM]OurManFromRushia wrote:
What do you guys think?

I think somebody told you that vista is the best OS to date and great for running on a laptop.

The space is probably being used by NTFS to store the MFT (http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs-mft.htm) and other bloat you cant normally see when running windows... I'm guessing vista is as bloated here as it is everywhere else.. my "hidden data" on XP clocks in at around 4gb on a drive the same size as yours with a tweaked file system (tweaks that would cause this hidden data to increase).

Try using something else to view disk stats.. i.e. a non-microsoft product. My defragger can pull info up about my disk and it shows the true size.

Solution for more space:

1) Move to an OS that lets you use all the hard drive (e.g. Linux)

2) move to XP for less bloat & crap to install (resulting in more space and a much faster laptop)

3) drop the 20gb recovery partition and merge it with your main one (if you dare)