I'm posting this in case there are any people like me who found themselves wondering what is taking up so much space on their new SSD and what can be done about it. It doesn't just apply to SSDs, but these tend to be smaller than regular HDDs so space is at more of a premium.
My computer (which I got a couple of weeks ago) has a 240GB SSD. After using it for a couple of days I noticed that 80GB had already been used. Looking at the folders I found c.20GB in windows and system files and another 10GB or so in files I had installed/copied over. Which left a further 50GB having mysteriously gone missing.
After hunting around for a while, I eventually worked out that this space was taken up by two huge hidden, system files stored in the C root directory called pagefile.sys (c.30GB) and hiberfil.sys (c.20GB) (the sizes may be different on your system). So naturally I wondered what these huge files were doing for me and whether I really needed them.
Virtual memory
The first file, pagefile.sys relates to virtual memory. Basically if your system runs out of RAM, it uses the HDD to provide extra memory (obviously this is much slower than RAM).
How useful this is depends on how you use your computer. If you have a huge number of things open at once, or a small amount of RAM (less than 4GB) then this could be useful. If not then you could easily get rid of it, shrink it and/or move it to a bigger storage HDD (will be slower, but hopefully you won't be needing it much anyway).
You can find information on how to do change your virtual memory settings (the size of the file and where it is stored) at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-vista/Change-the-size-of-virtual-memory
Personally I decided to adopt a conservative approach, and shrunk the file a bit while moving it to my much larger storage HDD (2 TB) where the space taken up is much less of an issue.
System Hibernation
The second file, hiberfil.sys, is used to allow your system to hibernate. Hibernation is basically putting your PC into a very low power mode but from where it can restart very quickly and keep all your programs open.
This is clearly very useful for a laptop but most people will find it much less useful for a desktop. Personally I've never used this feature, and certainly didn't want to waste 20GB of SDD space on it. Obviously if you find the hibernate feature very useful, then don't disable it.
You can find information on how to disable/enable this feature here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920730
Google Chrome
One other thing you may find taking up a significant amount of space on your SSD is, if you are using the Google Chrome web browser, its cache file. And unfortunately Google Chrome doesn't provide an easy option to change the size and/or location of this cache file.
It can be moved, but its a little more complicated - you will need to set some command line switches when you start the browser, and edit the registry so that opening new windows also uses the new location.
You can google for "google chrome cache move location" to get some information on how to move it. The best guide I found was at http://www.simplehelp.net/2010/11/16/how-to-change-the-google-chrome-cache-location/
My computer (which I got a couple of weeks ago) has a 240GB SSD. After using it for a couple of days I noticed that 80GB had already been used. Looking at the folders I found c.20GB in windows and system files and another 10GB or so in files I had installed/copied over. Which left a further 50GB having mysteriously gone missing.
After hunting around for a while, I eventually worked out that this space was taken up by two huge hidden, system files stored in the C root directory called pagefile.sys (c.30GB) and hiberfil.sys (c.20GB) (the sizes may be different on your system). So naturally I wondered what these huge files were doing for me and whether I really needed them.
Virtual memory
The first file, pagefile.sys relates to virtual memory. Basically if your system runs out of RAM, it uses the HDD to provide extra memory (obviously this is much slower than RAM).
How useful this is depends on how you use your computer. If you have a huge number of things open at once, or a small amount of RAM (less than 4GB) then this could be useful. If not then you could easily get rid of it, shrink it and/or move it to a bigger storage HDD (will be slower, but hopefully you won't be needing it much anyway).
You can find information on how to do change your virtual memory settings (the size of the file and where it is stored) at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-vista/Change-the-size-of-virtual-memory
Personally I decided to adopt a conservative approach, and shrunk the file a bit while moving it to my much larger storage HDD (2 TB) where the space taken up is much less of an issue.
System Hibernation
The second file, hiberfil.sys, is used to allow your system to hibernate. Hibernation is basically putting your PC into a very low power mode but from where it can restart very quickly and keep all your programs open.
This is clearly very useful for a laptop but most people will find it much less useful for a desktop. Personally I've never used this feature, and certainly didn't want to waste 20GB of SDD space on it. Obviously if you find the hibernate feature very useful, then don't disable it.
You can find information on how to disable/enable this feature here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920730
Google Chrome
One other thing you may find taking up a significant amount of space on your SSD is, if you are using the Google Chrome web browser, its cache file. And unfortunately Google Chrome doesn't provide an easy option to change the size and/or location of this cache file.
It can be moved, but its a little more complicated - you will need to set some command line switches when you start the browser, and edit the registry so that opening new windows also uses the new location.
You can google for "google chrome cache move location" to get some information on how to move it. The best guide I found was at http://www.simplehelp.net/2010/11/16/how-to-change-the-google-chrome-cache-location/
