freeing up hard drive space

[dkguitarist 5,000+ posts]

anyone know of any free programs or anything i can do to free up space on my c drive without having to reformat my drive? i have 121 mb free and i can't download any windows updates or updates for my motherboard. i've been trying to put everythign i download on my 200gb external drive but some things don't have an option of installing to an alternate drive. i desperately need space on my c drive. i'm thinking most of my problem is files in the registry/system files cuz i hardly have any program files on my c drive. i have 512mb of ram and it always drops below hundred (right now sitting at 75). i can't even defragment and my system restore is turned off due to not having 200mb free space. i desperately need it cleaned up.

reformatting is my last choice (but i may when windows vista comes out in january anyways). thanks.

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[j3bus2k3 5,000+ posts]

http://www.stevengould.org/software/cleanup/

The site is down right now, but the first time I ran it, it cleared up about 2gig of space...

 

[DBfan187 5,000+ posts]

disk cleanup? defrag?

 

[bonesninja 5,000+ posts]

click start, control panel, add or remove programs then start deleting your unused programs...you'd be suprized how much wasted shyt is on there.

 

[yacob.naif 10+ year member]

burn movies/music you downloaded to cd's/dvd's and delete off the drive

get rid of software you don't use

how'd you let it get that bad, that's attrocious

 

[dkguitarist 5,000+ posts]

i can't defrag. not enough space. all my music and movies are on my F drive. i keep trying the add/remove programs but all the programs are what i use right now. the disk is only 6.68 GB total capacity. had this drive for years. if i do reformat, then i'm just putting the OS, drivers, etc (the essentials) and everything else on the other drive.

 

[phantom240 5,000+ posts]

Delete ur ****. lol.

But seriously, got to http://www.majorgeeks.com and they have lots of drive cleaning utilities.

 

[Rochambeau 10+ year member]

Best solution is always to find the extra crap and uninstall/delete it. Use "add/remove programs" in the control panel. Also, move all your music/photos/**** to a folder on your external drive.

How big is your internal hard drive? If it is small, well a new drive could be in order. If not, SOMETHING is eating up all your space. Open the C drive and go to properties on each folder (and subfolders as necessary) to find the space hogs and decide if you have to keep them. Stay out of the WINDOWS folder if you don't know what you are doing.

Of course, you could also use your 200G drive to boot the system, you would have to install an operating system on it.

You could try going to My Computer then right click your C drive then go to properties. Check the box that says "Compress drive to save space" and see if that frees up space. You will likely take a performance hit though, especially if you are running a slow drive (less than 7200RPM).

 

[pwnt by pat 10+ year member]

upgrade your freaking hard drive.

You probably run XP on that thing, which uses more than 3 gigs with just a basic install.

Shut off system restore and disable hibernation.

And do NOT use the "compress space" option. It can screw things up.

 

[nVRuckus 5,000+ posts]

click start, control panel, add or remove programs then start deleting your unused programs...you'd be suprized how much wasted shyt is on there.

yup just run disk defrag afterwards though //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[SHiZNiLTi 10+ year member]

I'm a network admin I do this shit all the time.

This is what your gonna do to increase your hard drive space and overall speed of your machine without loosing any of your programs, files or settings.

1st figure out if you have a SATA on your mother board, here is the difference between the two...

Once you find out if you have a open SATA port or IDE, you will then purchase (2) things.

• Norton Ghost made by Symantec is a great program to use in your scenario.
  
• 200gb to 300gb SATA or IDE 7200rpm 16mb cache Hard Drive
  

The giant hard drives are dirt cheap, you shouldn't pay more then $100 for 300gb, try to get the 16mb cache over the 8mb cache if you can.

What Norton Ghost will be able to do is clone your old hard drive over to your new hard drive and allow you to utilize the leftover space on the new HD.

You will boot off of the Norton Ghost CD and a DOS like menu will come up with mouse support.

Under action you choose Local and then choose To Disk Then find the new 300gb HD that you have installed in your PC and let it run for a few hours.

Then eject the cd and reboot.

Make sure that in your BIOS you have the new HD selected as 1st boot device. You may also need to go into the bios to set it up to boot from CD when you start this procedure.

*if your thinking you can just buy a new HD and just highlight everything from your old HD and Copy it to the new HD while in Windows, thats wrong it wont work. You need Ghost to Clone the HD over to the new HD with using its program that runs before windows starts.*

If anyone reads this and is confused why or how please ask, Thanks!

 

[dkguitarist 5,000+ posts]

well i just cleared up 1 gig of space now. deleted a bunch of internet files and shit. and yes i have xp. i just don't wanna screw up my machine by doing something i know nothing about.

 

[luvinthebass 5,000+ posts]

delete your old windows updates, there's usually a shitload of them that take up space

 

[SHiZNiLTi 10+ year member]

If you have MSN Messenger 7.5 I can remotly take control of you PC and clean it out even more and tweak it up for ya. For a quick performance boost you can do a start run type msconfig and click startup tab then uncheck what items you dont need in startup But like you said if you don't wany to screw something up I would let someone else do it.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0B88CCBF-4C52-4347-AA71-87184A13AC1C&displaylang=en

 

[nVRuckus 5,000+ posts]

well i just cleared up 1 gig of space now. deleted a bunch of internet files and shit. and yes i have xp. i just don't wanna screw up my machine by doing something i know nothing about.

you can remove programs throgh add and remove programs. I have a rule, if i havent used the program in the last month its gone. good way to keep your shit free. if you have the cash buy another drive and run dual drives and all new installations install to the new drive.