Creating space on desktop hard drive

H

Horn89

1,000+ Posts
I have an old desktop... bought in '03, I think (yeah, yeah, I know).

Anyway, it has a 16 gig hard drive. Lately I get nearly constant warnings of "hard drive almost full... you need to delete old or unused files." So I went through my old outlook express folder and deleted hundreds of emails (many with documents and videos attached). Also deleted a bunch of full-resolution photos, some Word files, some Adobe files, etc.

Then I was going to run the disk defragmenter, but it says "only 276 megs available... not enough memory available to defragment drive." I think I must have deleted way more than that... so why didn't it create any space?

BTW, been saying for 2 years that it's time for a new desktop, but the damn thing just keeps going and going (maybe until now, that is).

Advice appreciated.
 
This may be a silly question, but did you empty the recycle bin after deleting all those files?
 
Go get a copy of EasyCleaner A Link, make sure it's up-to-date, and run the "Registry", "Unnecessary", "Clear Files", "Clear History", and "MRU" passes.

I would also look into your installed programs and see if there's anything you don't use, need, or want anymore and uninstall that stuff.

If you have any, I would also archive, cull or simply get rid of documents, saved files, saved offline websites, mp3, WAV, other music formats, images, or video files.

If you dump that kind of stuff, you could also consider dumping the players, or go find a small "all in one" player (like Winamp, though it's not that small anymore).

I would also go to C:WINDOWS and delete any .log files and/or image files (your desktop background images will be here) you don't want/need. You can also safely delete the blue "$NtUninstall[letters and numbers are here]$" files.

The problem you might also have with a 16G hard drive is simply if you allowed regular software updates. That can put a bunch of stuff in your system that you can't get rid of. And fill up a disk that size pretty quick. Like you, I have an older desktop that still runs great that I don't want to get rid of, it has a 40G disk and I have to fight to keep it from filling up.
 
Thanks jmatt. I'll try those things.

I do think the software updates are part of the problem. Seems like every other day there's an icon in the bottom of the screen that something is being updated (Adobe, the printer software, a Microsoft program, etc.).
 
In my experience the biggest areas that space is wasted are:

- Recycle Bin. It can really blow up with people who aren't militant about emptying it. I've seen users with as much as 1GB of crap waiting to be deleted.

- Browser cache / Temporary Internet Files. By default, IE caps your cache size at a certain percentage of your hard disk size, but that can still be several GB.

- Temporary files (located in C:WindowsTemp and C:Documents and SettingsusernameLocal SettingsTemp). This is usually garbage left over from software installations (although Windows also stores performance data here) and anything in these folders can be safely nuked from orbit.

- Programs that are installed that you no longer use. You might be surprised how much space some of these take up.

Cleaning the registry is good to do every now and then and may give you a slight performance boost, but it won't clear up a lot of disk space. Likewise, your browser history (different from your cache) and the MRUs (Most Recently Used lists) don't usually take up a ton of space either, but I think it depends a lot on how different programs implement those. I know Chrome's history files can get pretty large over a long span of time.

Are you generally happy with how the computer is running? You could simply drop in a new, much larger hard disk for less than $100, run a clean install of Windows, and keep using what you've got. A clean install would also inherently run faster than your existing install since it hasn't yet been bogged down from years of use.
 
Thanks to all for the advice.

I ran Easycleaner and gained over a gig (!) of free space.

The computer went from agonizingly slow to just kind of slow.

Anyway, I'm probably going to start backing up everything to one of the online "cloud" data storage sites. I think this hard drive's days are numbered whatever I decide (new computer vs. new hard drive).
 
Check out CrashPlan for your back up service. They give you the option of backing up to a remote friend's machine or any number of other options including their cloud service. I've been using their software and it seems to be living up to the excellent reviews they get.
 
You may also check to see if you have anything in your downloads folder. Any attachment you download is going to be left over there, and it can be quite a bit of space depending on what the items are.

My Documents/Downloads
 
I don't know if this is an option for you.
But if you have an open USB port, you could buy an external hard drive.
For way less than $100 you could increase your storage space by for than 25X.

I did this with my old dell laptop. Moved all of our photos/videos/financial files.

Also another decent freeware program is glary utiliites. It will clean/recommended files referenced above.
 
I just ran across something nifty - "PureRa"

[from developers'. page]

"PureRa is a simple tool that does a simple job: it removes files from your computer that other mainstream cleaning programs tend to oversee. Some of our targets can simply be removed to create some valuable space while others are removed in an attempt to repair certain problems because they will simply recreate themselves."

its from the same group who puts out 'JavaRa'.... never had a problem with this one.


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WinDirStat here

great program that i use whenever my drives get full. lets you look at your drive and see all the stuff that takes up space. very handy
 
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