Some of Windows Vista’s “Enhancements” have made the operating system rely heavily on valuable hard disk space.  Recently I’ve been trying to comprehend how I could have possibly filled up a 750 gb hard drive with 680 gb of information after only owning the computer for 6 months.  The fact of the matter is that a few of these “enhancements” use way more than they need in order to “enhance” your user experience.

There are two Windows Vista Specific features that hinder disk space:

1. Windows “Temp” folder (Used for IE7 and applications that use the Windows Installer API for installation)
2. Windows “Shadow Copy” service (Used to create periodic system restore points to prevent data loss due to malicious software or hardware failure)

You can save yourself upwards of 5 GB of space if you periodically empty your “TEMP” folder, however the real disk space hog lies in the latter “enhancement.”

The Windows Shadow Copy service can use up to 15% of your hard disk space just by keeping ancient versions of your files.  The problem lies in that the Windows Shadow Copy service creates copies of your files DAILY by default.  From what i’ve seen this “vault” of backups purges backups that are a month old or older.

By deleting the Windows Shadow Copy backups (not including the most recent one) I was able to free up 120 gb of space on my 750 GB hard drive (16%).

Thankfully, Windows Vista provides us with an age old tool to nuke worthless, decaying files: Disk Cleanup.  Originally I was skeptical that this utility would be useful (due to the ever-so-hated “Desktop Cleanup” on XP), however it seems to get the job done well.

• Start by opening up “Disk Cleanup” in “System Tools” under “Accessories” on the start menu.  From there, select “C:\” to scan that drive for files to clean.

• Once the Cleanup utility has actually opened, here you can check off other things you would like to cleanup like the Windows Temp Folder.  Mine had 4 GB of information in it.  You can also trash the Hibernate information if you prefer to use the sleep feature instead. (No they are not the same thing.)

• So just go ahead and check off whatever you don’t want, then move on to the “More options” tab and under “System Restore and Shadow Copies” click “Cleanup.”

• Next, a confirmation window will appear, asking you to delete all but your most recent restore points.  Click “Delete”

• At this point you may think: “AHH MY COMPUTERS FROZEN!” But no worries, Windows is handling a lot of information right now and is currently deleting a lot of information. To check and make sure your Disk Cleanup application is still functioning, open up “My Computer” and see if your C:\’s free space is increasing by right clicking and hitting “Refresh” periodically.

This should give you plenty of disk space back.

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Some development stuff i’d like to post soon:

- How to fix bootcamp 2.0 in leopard
- Barcode generator with caching support
- FWDK updates
- FileCal updates
- G2P Lite updates
- How to clean up a windows xp/vista computer so it actually runs faster
- How to build a web based security system for under $100
- jQuery tutorials
- Debt management system
- IMS dev

He needs to fix his site!

In other news, I took down my old server and set up a new one.  This one is built tougher and has been locked down for security.  I’ve got the thing running all my development script as well as my nightly builds.  Hopefully I will be able to fix my music server, but Windows to Linux networking is pretty miserable sometimes.

FWDK (Foski Web Development Kit) has been an ongoing project for the last couple months and I hope to release a demo online as soon as possible.  I’m not really sure if I will release the source code of this project yet.. But only time will tell.

PS. I love jQuery..

But basically every site i’ve ever programmed will be on this server sooner or later…

Seriously loving my LAMP setup right now, and i’m getting to learn a lot about apache and server administration in general.

More to come!

Head over to the FileCal page to download.

More Info >
G2P Lite > 

My hardware configuration:
-Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 (2.0 GHz)
-2GB DDR2 533MHz
-500GB + 120 GB SATA HD’s
-Board: Intel D945GCF
-Chipset: 82945G
-Intel GMA 950 Graphics
-10/100 Mbps Lan (Works on Vista + Ubuntu, not osx86)
-Integrated 8-Channel Sigmatel Audio (Works on Vista + Ubuntu, not on osx86)
-USB 2.0 Bluetooth Adapter (Works on Ubuntu + osx86, not on Vista)
-USB 2.0 Ethernet Adapter (Works on osx86, not on Vista + Ubuntu)
-USB 2.0 Audio Adapter (Works on osx86 + Vista, not on Ubuntu)

1. You will need:

• A PC with the same board/chipset/graphics for this install to work. A lot of computers come standard with this configuration.
• A copy of the Kalyway patched 10.5.1 OSX86 Install DVD.
• A copy of Ubuntu 7.10 (http://www.ubuntu.com)
• Any copy of Windows Vista (or xp really)
• Two (2) Hard drives! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, makes life much easier and you don’t risk destroying your other partitions when installing OSX86.

2. Make sure both drives are attached by sata, configure your prefered vista drive as primary in your BIOS and go ahead and install it on your primary drive if you haven’t already.
3. When you’re done, use Vistas “disk management” tool under “computer management” in the “administrative tools” section of the control panel to free up some space in an additional partition for an Ubuntu install on your Vista Drive.
4. Insert your Kalyway disc and restart your computer, before the install starts jump into your BIOS.
5. Configure your hard drives so that your OSX hard drive will be primary instead of your vista drive. Exit + Save
6. Kalyway disc will start, allow the disk to load, it may take a few minutes. Patience is a virtue!
7. STOP, do not continue your installation yet, you need to partition!
9. Go to tools > disk utility and select your OSX hard drive from the left hand list.
10. Click the partition tab, and select 1 partition. Name your partition something simple, I used “osx”. DON’T USE SPACES. Choose MacOS Extended (Journaled) Filesystem. Do not click “apply” yet.
11. Choose “options” > this screen will appear:

12. For this hardware configuration only MBR will work with the EFI bios for this chipset. I’ve tried GUID, as it works better on intel processors, but nevertheless, no luck.
13. Click apply and complete the partitioning, close disk utility.
14. Continue the installer, agree to the terms + conditions. You will see a customize button before you click on “Install.” Click this option.
15. Check both the vanilla kernals and the EFI bootloader(MBR not GUID) at the bottom. I couldn’t get any of the sound drivers to work on my onboard sound, but i resolved the issue with a USB sound card (see bottom).
16. Click “done” and continue with the install.
17. When it’s all said and done, you should be able to restart and boot into OSX86 without the disc in the drive.
18. Eject the disc, and insert your Ubuntu 7.10 disc.
19. Restart the computer, and head into BIOS.
20. Reset your Vista drive as your primary hard drive. Save + Quit
21. When prompted to start ubuntu live cd, do so.
22. Once on the Ubuntu desktop, click install and follow the basic instructions. Use “largest continuous free space” for the space to install, and it will install to the empty partition on your vista drive you created in step 3. MAKE SURE YOU INSTALL GRUB BOOTLOADER!
23. Complete the install, eject Ubuntu disc, and restart.
24. When prompted with the Grub bootloader, choose Ubuntu 7.10 and boot into your linux partition.
25. Open up a new terminal and type in: “sudo fdisk -l” (confirm with password)
26. It should display a list of hard drives and their partitions, this will give you an idea of how you’ll need to configure GRUB, to boot into your OSX and Vista partitions. Keep this terminal open!
27. Open another terminal and type: “sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst” (confirm with password)
28. In front of you a gedit window will appear with the current Grub configuration. You’re going to have to add some new entries to this setup.
29. This is what my menu.lst file looks like, yours should look very similar, however you’re partitions may be labeled differently. Replace “root (hdX,Y)” as needed to make it match what you have displayed in the terminal you opened in step 25 + 26.

default 0
timeout 5

title Mac OS X86
root (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
makeactive

title Windows Vista
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
makeactive

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=c50989a9-f628-48e8-90f7-d8b3836d6bc2 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=c50989a9-f628-48e8-90f7-d8b3836d6bc2 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic

title Ubuntu 7.10, memtest86+
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

30. Once you’re sure you’re good, save and restart. The configuration I put in above should work beautifully with OSX being primary, Vista/XP secondary, and Ubuntu tertiary. ENJOY!

Extras I had to buy later:
- USB audio adapter (works out of the box) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829128002
- USB ethernet adapter (works with drivers on this page) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833114017
- USB bluetooth adapter(works out of the box) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156069

Photos:

Videos:
- Youtube video of my setup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1VD2lXpcZ0 (sorry it’s so quiet!)

This is basically my experience and setup of a functional triple boot.I used two hard drives:
- 1 with Ubuntu Linux 7.10 + Vista [Prim]
- 1 with Osx86 (kalyway) [Sec]

Grub bootloader modified to boot into the EFI setup on the OSX partition by default.

I’ll post stats later

FileCal is a simple implementation of an ftp based calendar/event system. This is great for developers without easy access to MySQL or for quick and painless event creation. FileCal is designed for posting banners or fliers directly onto a calender without having to do more than a drag and drop.