I just recently bought a new laptop a month or so ago. It's a HP dv6707us. I have two questions.
1. is it possible to remove the hp recovery partition drive? I have the backup CD's directly from HP and the recovery drive takes up 12gb of space. Also does anyone know if the recovery cd's put the partition drive back on if you run them? And will removing the partition hurt anything since i do have back up cds. And how do i delete a partition if it's recommend, which if i have backup cd's can it harm hte laptop. I do i read i can do this:
Restart the computer
Press F11 as the computer starts up
You will get a message that says "HP Recovery ", wait
You will see a 'Welcome to HP Recovery ' screen of sorts
Click <OK>
Click <Advanced Options>
Select <Delete Recovery Partition >
Click <OK>
2. the computer has 160gb, after formatting it, hp software etc. out of the box it had 109gb free, I put in about 25ish gb of items, from software, songs, movies, etc. I removed some of the software from hp, mainly the sims game which takes up about 2.5 gb. Basically as of now, i have 76gb free. Now every time i look at my free space is seems like i'm loosing a 1gb or so, now i realize some are from windows updates, etc. so basically from the 25gb i put in taken away from 109 i had available there is about 8gb somewhere which may have gone to windows updaets, is there a program that doesn't take up a lot of space that will allow me to see what all has been added, having a computer that shows 160gb and only putting in 25 myself and only showing 76 free is a little disheartening. It also runs vista home prem. which i know takes up a lot but i still fee i should have more space. Which is one reason why i want to remove the partition to give me 12 more gb.

First of all, 160GB is the physical size (160 billion bytes), logical (usable) space is only about 150GB, so that's 10 gone. You lose another 12 from your above mentioned utility partition, so 22 gone - before you even load software. Vista takes up about 9, so 31. 25 from the stuff you added, 56. Swap file - 1 GB, index cache, 1 GB: 58, which we'll round up to 60 to cover fractions in all of the above, fragment and small files taking up more space than they should due to block size, as well as any HP apps you didn't remove and the remnants of the ones you did. It's entirely likely that there's still a lot of HP-installed crap on there taking up more space as well.

The majority of the rest is probably in system restore and shadow copies (aka Previous Versions). You can turn them off, but I'd leave them on until you REALLY need the space - they can come in handy. Remember also that anything in the recycle bin still shows up as used, as do temp files and files you downloaded and opened without saving until you flush your browser cache. Photo editing apps like Photoshop will also make huge cache files, as do video editing apps.

My advice is not to worry about it until you're actually low on space, which you're not, but if you really want details you can download a trial version of O&O Diskstat or the java freeware app jdiskreport. The latest version of PerfectDisk also has built in disk reporting.

Or pop in an OEM Vista DVD and do a clean install. I didn't even bother making recovery dvds because I know i would never use them. If you are asking these questions, not to be offensive or judgemental, but it might be a good idea to hang onto the dvds that you have for recovery and do what Illrigger said and wait it out until you need space. By that time you'll have a good understanding of the hardware you have and what to do at that time.

If you want a clean Vista DVD without the HP garbage, I suggest you order an Anytime Upgrade Disc from Microsoft. You can get the disc for around 9 bucks shipped.