So i recently imaged a hard drive standard 7200rpm 500gig....But to my surprise (I did not check before hand shame on me) it had data stored on it...now after Win 7 prof installation its says it has 296 / 486 gigs occupied ....I cannot find this mystery data that occupies this space... I am wondering if I can do anything to free up that space other than re-format the drive entirely??

Did you do an upgrade or fresh install?

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Data Recovery Ireland

Fresh...

Hello Yami,

You Installed Windows 7, it does take space on the hard drive. Did you run Disk Clean up? or You can try

1.You have hibernate on 2. Page file 3. System Restore. These all take up memory and must be manually turned off.

There is a hidden folder Named APP data used by programs to save data for each user. This folder can be GBs in Size.
(not really necessary) do check if this is a reason.

Do let me know if this worked or not.!!