desktop PC running out of hard drive space!!!!

[humanoid]

My 80gig HD on my desktop PC is running out of space. I've deleted all unnecessary pgms and I'm at the bare minimum. I have all my music and vid files on an external drive already and I'm at the max on my primary drive. Currently running WinXP Pro SP2. I installed this HD just a few months ago too. Could it be the system restore files taking up all that space? That's all I can think of right now...

Oh, I downloaded CCleaner and gained about 1.5 gig back after deleting a lot of crap.

[ictvuser]

Originally posted by humanoid
Could it be the system restore files taking up all that space? That's all I can think of right now

Here are a few ideas you might want to consider.

* Check your Profile
- Go to "My Computer"
- Double click on the C:\ drive
- Right click on "Documents and Settings" and select Properties
- If the amount of the disk space used seems high, double check
that your Temporary Internet Files cache was cleaned up correctly.

* Check for lots of small files
- Do you have a very large number of small files. The default cluster
size is usually 4KB so a 1 byte file will 4KB of space on the drive.

* Check for large files
- Go to "My Computer"
- Right click on the C:\ drive and select Search
- Search "More advanced options" and select the checkboxes for
"Search system folders"
"Search hidden files and folders"
"Search subfolders"
- Search "What size is it" and select the radio button for
"Specify size (in KB) and enter in a size (e.g., 5000 or 5MB).
- Press the "Search" button

* Check for fragmented volumes
If you still have sufficient free disk space try defrag'ing your hard drive.
NOTE: Recommend that you backup any user data on the drive first
- Go to "My Computer"
- Right click on the C:\ drive and select Properties
- Select the "Tools" tab
- Press the "Check Now" button under "Error-checking"
- Leave the checkboxes unchecked and press the "Start" button
- If there are no errors reported, press the "Defragment Now" button
- In Disk Defragmenter, press the "Analyze" button
- If the Disk Defragmenter thinks you should defragment the volume
press the "View Report" button and see why.

[Nathan]

Do you have a good virus/malware scanner on there? Sometimes those things will get on your computer then fill your disk with junk.

[rocky]

Adaware and Spybot are two good programs to clean up HDs of all the tracking crap that comes with surfing the web.

But of course they take up room on your hard drive....

[Scoobs]

If you've been burning DVDs or SVCDs with Nero or a program that uses Nero in the background there could be temporary copies of the burned images on your harddisk ( not to be confused any actual copies that you asked the program to save on the harddisk when you burned the DVD ) I ran into that problem but I can't remember right now what directory the temporary copies ended up in.

[humanoid]

Thanks for all the replies, guys and gals!

Scoobs: I do have Nero and I use it quite often, but I think CCleaner deleted all the temp files.

Rocky: Currently running Spybot and Ad-Aware and no malicious files came up.

Nathan: Running AVG right now and from what I know it has a very small footprint as compared to Norton AV.

ictvuser: Thanks, tried your suggestions and gained some more MB back, but won't let me defrag unless I have at least 15% usable free space on my HD

Any more help would be greatly appreciated!

[ramirami]

Originally posted by humanoid
Could it be the system restore files taking up all that space? That's all I can think of right now...

how many do yu have...??

[dontnomuch007]

Go to control panel and run (Add or Remove Programs). Look at all of the software you have installed and delete any programs you do not need by clicking on the REMOVE button.

The other option is to get a larger hard drive 80 gig is pretty small for today's computers. I recently saw an add in CompUSA for a 300 gb hard drive for only $62.

[CMasten]

If your trying to just get some space back, you can also go into control panels and run add/remove programs, check both applications that you no longer need and windows components that you dont need, that is usually able to free up a lot of space as you have added apps etc over time and forgot about them. Just one more item in a great list of ideas.

[Scoobs]

It still sounds to me like you have some temp files somewhere taking up a great deal of space. I can't believe that you have filled an 80 GB HD with installed programs. If you have, those programs must be big time hogs. ( you mentioned you keep your data on another drive )

When I ran into the same problem on my computer, on a 250GB HD, I realized something was up 'cause there was no way the programs and saved data were taking up that much space. The usual programs for finding and deleting temp files didn't work. I had to find the files manually and delete them from the directory they were in. If I remember what directory they were in when I was using Nero I'll let you know. It wasn't a subdirectory of Nero and the files weren't actually labelled as temp files even though they were temp files that Nero was creating in the background when I was burning SVCDs.

[john802]

Additional things to check after doing what other members have suggested. Try lowering the amount of disk space to use for your temporary internet folder to 15MB or less on ie. Also, use 10MB or less of disk space for the cache on firefox. Try having only 1 restore point on your system or better yet if you're like me, not having it. Try lowering the amount of disk space use by the recycle bin. Try searching for all you bak files & deleting it. If you are using antivirus software, try avoiding symantec/norton. That software gobbles up a lot of disk space. Defrag you h/d often.

[5Gs]

you may also want to check how big your swap (virtual memory) file is set to. it's quite possible it's set to something much bigger than what you really need.

[humanoid]

I'll try all those tips ppl have suggested. I'm still at 1.59 gig right now. I'll look into deleting all the .BAK files too.

Ramirami: I've deleted all the restore points except the most recent one.

BTW, I somehow deleted the calculator too that came with Windows. Anyone know how I can get that back?

Scoobs: hope you can find out for me where the Nero temp file is...

Thanks again for all the help guys and gals, keep those suggestions coming in!

[5Gs]

remember to also "empty recycle bin" after you delete the files. I think that should give you a better indication of how much free space you have.

[jcantanixon]

Originally posted by ictvuser


* Check for large files
- Go to "My Computer"
- Right click on the C:\ drive and select Search
- Search "More advanced options" and select the checkboxes for
"Search system folders"
"Search hidden files and folders"
"Search subfolders"
- Search "What size is it" and select the radio button for
"Specify size (in KB) and enter in a size (e.g., 5000 or 5MB).
- Press the "Search" button

Did you do the search above? I'm sure you'd find whatever is taking up all of that space...