My hard drive is nearly full?!

[pollyannepocket]

Hi,

I have a 37gb hard drive.

It became full very quickly after I bought my PC. It's been like this for so long now and I've decided to finally do something about it.

I'm using Vista.

 

From what I can see this is what is using the space:

Program files: 4gb

Toshiba: 44mb

Users: 9gb

Windows: 13gb

 

This totals approx 26 gb... so what happened to the other 11gb?!

 

I know a little about pc's but not enough to fix this.

 

Can someone please help me? and treat me like an idiot so I can't make any mistakes!

Any help would be really appreciated!

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Hi Polly

 

Can you post a screen shot of what it says in Disk Management please.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

I'll split that HJT log as a separate post Polly but in the meantime have a read of this.

 

http://extremetechsupport.com/forum/articles-and-tutorials/1328-screen-shot-and-do-make-one.html

[pollyannepocket]

Hi, I know how to create a cren shot, but it's the screen shot of the disk management that I can't do...

where do I find the disk management?

Thanks.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Right click on Computer and click Manage, in the next screen click Disk Management in Storage.

[pollyannepocket]

I have attached the screen print.

Thanks!

[Guest Wolfeymole]

So in actuality you have an 80Gb hard drive containing windows and other stuff and a 150GB secondary hard drive that's formatted in FAT32.

 

The E: drive could be used for what ever you want but why aren't you using G: to put your stuff on as you have nearly 47GB of free space left on that?

[Seth]

I read your first post and noted that there is no way a Vista system will have that small of a drive.

 

There is plenty of space on the "G" drive (the one called Elements).

[pollyannepocket]

Hi,

The G drive is my boyfriends, and it's used for all his photography. So I can't use it.

I am using my E drive, but I'm regularly having to delete stuff off it to provide more space.

 

I'm quite sure my C drive should not have filled up so quickly.

I have few photos on my pc, and about 5 gb of music.

 

Is there no other help you can give me?

[Seth]

Download and run Treesize to show you specifics and what you can delete. Don't forget to empty the Recycle Bin.

 

JAM Software - Windows Freeware

 

Also clear out the temps by using CCleaner (Don't use the registry cleaner in this program).

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Polly if this is your machine then I'd tell your bf to get his own as he has the lions share of your hard drive space.

 

I'd also seriously reprimand the clown that installed Vista on your 80GB hard drive.

[pollyannepocket]

Thanks for that.

Ccleaner has gotten rid of about 1gb.

 

But My c drive is still really full.

 

Tree size says most of it is taken by windows, then users, then program files.

 

Are there any other programs that can help me get rid of what I don't need?

 

I also have loads of stuff launching at startup, and I'm not sure what I need and what I don't...

[pollyannepocket]

Polly if this is your machine then I'd tell your bf to get his own as he has the lions share of your hard drive space.

 

I'd also seriously reprimand the clown that installed Vista on your 80GB hard drive.

 

The g drive is external. and he has his own pc, the drive was just plugged in so he could use my version of photoshop.

 

And the laptop came with vista already on it.

I don't know where you see 80gb hard drive... (are you including my e drive?)

[Guest Wolfeymole]

If your gonna go long term on this you seriously need to think about getting a bigger hard drive, 80GB is meaningless.

 

I have a 500GB main drive with a pocket drive at 160GB and an external drive at 80GB just for obscure bits.

 

Hard drives are cheap these days Polly.

[Seth]

I agree.

 

Unless you start deleting your pictures, etc, there isn't much else you can do except get a larger drive. If you do so, you can use the free version of Acronis's Migrate Easy to clone the contents of the old drive onto the new one.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Combine all the GB capacities on disk 0 Polly then take into account that some aspects of the actual size will be reduced.

 

It's complicated to explain.

[pollyannepocket]

If your gonna go long term on this you seriously need to think about getting a bigger hard drive, 80GB is meaningless.

 

I have a 500GB main drive with a pocket drive at 160GB and an external drive at 80GB just for obscure bits.

 

Hard drives are cheap these days Polly.

 

 

Thanks. I'm also looking to buy some more memory. Can you tell me the best place to buy a bigger hard drive (with the best prices please!)

 

Thanks for all your help.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Western Digital 3.5" 500GB at PC World - Buy cheap 3.5inch Hard Drives (OEM) - Western Digital 3.5" 500GB SATA Internal Hard Drive

 

Hard Drives - 3.5" SATA Drives - Ebuyer

[Seth]

As Wolfey has pointed out in his links, you should have a SATA drive as opposed to the older type PATA drive. They look the same other than how they connect.

 

SATA:

 

http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2005/11/23/pc_interfaces_101/hdd_sata_connected.jpg

 

PATA:

 

http://freepctech.com/pc/001/images/hd12.jpg

[Jack Hackett]

I notice that the Data E: partition still has 16GB of free space on it ;)

 

What sort of stuff is taking up the rest of the space on E:?

Why dont you use that for all your personal data etc, move it all over to the E drive.

 

Any duplicate files sitting on the E drive? duplicate in that you have the same files on C and E

 

I think that with some simple file management housekeeping you could resolve your issue quite satisfactory