Cleaning up C drive

[Guest]

I'm down to 9% free space on my 80 gig C drive and I've tried all the usual
ways to free up more--defragging, adding a second hard drive and deleting or
moving programs I don't need, etc. Is there a way to determine precisely
what programs and files are taking up so much of the space? I can't seem to
make much of a dent in it.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I'm down to 9% free space on my 80 gig C drive and I've tried all
the usual ways to free up more--defragging, adding a second hard
drive and deleting or moving programs I don't need, etc. Is there
a way to determine precisely what programs and files are taking up
so much of the space? I can't seem to make much of a dent in it.

Used Disk Cleanup?
Is hibernate turned on and do you use that feature?
Uninstalled unnecessary applications lately?

If you are comfortable with the stability of your system, you can delete the
uninstall files for the patches that Windows XP has installed..

http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/spack.htm

You can run Disk Cleanup - built into Windows XP - to erase all but yuor
latest restore point and cleanup even more "loose files"..

How to use Disk Cleanup
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312

You can turn off hibernation if it is on and you don't use it..

When you hibernate your computer, Windows saves the contents of the system's
memory to the hiberfil.sys file. As a result, the size of the hiberfil.sys
file will always equal the amount of physical memory in your system. If you
don't use the hibernate feature and want to recapture the space that Windows
uses for the hiberfil.sys file, perform the following steps:

- Start the Control Panel Power Options applet (go to Start, Settings,
Control Panel, and click Power Options).
- Select the Hibernate tab, clear the "Enable hibernation" check box, then
click OK; although you might think otherwise, selecting Never under the
"System hibernates" option on the Power Schemes tab doesn't delete the
hiberfil.sys file.
- Windows will remove the "System hibernates" option from the Power Schemes
tab and delete the hiberfil.sys file.

You can control how much space your System Restore can use...
(You may want to turn this off on your system.. 3GB?!)

1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the System Restore tab.
3. Highlight one of your drives (or C: if you only have one) and click on
the "Settings" button.
4. Change the percentage of disk space you wish to allow.. I suggest 5% or
higher.
5. Click OK.. Then Click OK again.

You can control how much space your Temporary Internet Files can utilize...

Empty your Temporary Internet Files and shrink the size it stores to a
size between 128MB and 512MB..

- Open ONE copy of Internet Explorer.
- Select TOOLS -> Internet Options.
- Under the General tab in the "Temporary Internet Files" section, do the
following:
- Click on "Delete Cookies" (click OK)
- Click on "Settings" and change the "Amount of disk space to use:" to
something between 128MB and 512MB. (Betting it is MUCH larger right
now.)
- Click OK.
- Click on "Delete Files" and select to "Delete all offline contents"
(the checkbox) and click OK. (If you had a LOT, this could take 2-10
minutes or more.)
- Once it is done, click OK, close Internet Explorer, re-open Internet
Explorer.

You can use an application that scans your system for log files and
temporary files and use that to get rid of those:

Ccleaner (Free!)
http://www.ccleaner.com/

Other ways to free up space..

SequoiaView
http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

DX Hog Hunt
http://www.dvxp.com/en/Downloads.aspx

JDiskReport
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/index.html

Those can help you visually discover where all the space is being used.

 

[Shaun]

Pictures, video clips, sound file, mp3.

Removing programs don't get you much

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Shelterdog" <[email protected]>

| I'm down to 9% free space on my 80 gig C drive and I've tried all the usual
| ways to free up more--defragging, adding a second hard drive and deleting or
| moving programs I don't need, etc. Is there a way to determine precisely
| what programs and files are taking up so much of the space? I can't seem to
| make much of a dent in it.

All techniques are pennies on the dollar.

Get a replacement hard disk and clone the old to the new drive.

Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost are excellent for the task.

 

[Elmo]

I'm down to 9% free space on my 80 gig C drive and I've tried all the usual
ways to free up more--defragging, adding a second hard drive and deleting or
moving programs I don't need, etc. Is there a way to determine precisely
what programs and files are taking up so much of the space? I can't seem to
make much of a dent in it.

Defragging saves no space; it merely aligns clusters.. there should be
literally no change is size between a defragmented and a fragmented drive.

 

[Mrich]

Hello,
I noticed you did'nt mention deleting or moving user files ie the files
created by the applications.

Would you have happened to move user created files to the new hard drive. I
usually do a search for my larger files first such as avi, mpg and even mp3
files in case I have some that I've forgotten to remove that I dont want.
Just my 2 cents....

 

[Guest]

I did move sound & video files, and I'm willing to try the other helpful
suggestions, above. But before doing so, I was trying to find out if there's
a feature in Windows that readily indicates which programs/files are using
the largest share of the space on the drive?

 

[R. McCarty]

Without a 3rd-Party Disk Usage tool, best to just Right Click the primary
folders in the root of the Windows drive and take Properties.
- Documents and Settings
- Windows
- Program Files
Will give you a general idea where the largest share of space is being
used. Don't forget System Restore, as with it's default allocation it can
take up a lot of space. ( System Volume Information folder ).

 

[Dave Cohen]

I'm down to 9% free space on my 80 gig C drive and I've tried all the usual
ways to free up more--defragging, adding a second hard drive and deleting or
moving programs I don't need, etc. Is there a way to determine precisely
what programs and files are taking up so much of the space? I can't seem to
make much of a dent in it.

A freebie download 'diskdata' will help track usage. Personally, I
prefer to keep windows and installed programs on C drive and use volumes
in an extended partition for data, that helps keep track of what is
going where. Sound like you could use either a much bigger main drive or
an external usb hd. They're getting cheaper all the time.
Dave Cohen

 

[AJR]

Open Windows Explorer>View>Details - files can be listed by size, date, etc.
and can be sorted by size. No size will be listed for folders but by
individual files.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I'm down to 9% free space on my 80 gig C drive and I've tried all the usual
ways to free up more--defragging, adding a second hard drive and deleting or
moving programs I don't need, etc. Is there a way to determine precisely
what programs and files are taking up so much of the space? I can't seem to
make much of a dent in it.

A primary space waster within each user profile would be IE's
penchant for storing copies (or significant portions thereof) of nearly
every web page your friend has ever visited. Try reducing the amount of
temporary Internet files cached, which is huge by default. I always
reduce it to a maximum of 50 Mb. In Internet Explorer, click Tools >
Internet Options > General, Temporary Files > Settings.

Same principle for the Java cache. Start > Control Panel > Java >
Temporary Internet Files > Settings.

The System Volume Information is the folder in which WinXP's System
Restore feature stores information used to recover from errors. By
default, WinXP sets aside a maximum of 12% of the partition's size for
storing System Volume Information, but the amount of space set aside for
this purpose can be adjusted by the user. Start > All Programs >
Accessories > System Tools > System Restore > System Restore Settings,
select the pertinent partition and click Settings. If you don't want to
use System Restore at all, simply turn off the System Restore feature
(Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore,
System Restore Settings) and reboot. This will delete all of your
Restore Points, freeing up the hard drive space.

Another great waster of space can be the Recycle Bin. By default,
this takes up to 10% of your hard drive capacity. On today's large hard
drives, this is tremendously wasteful. It can be set to a lower limit
by right-clicking the desktop Receycle Bin icon, selecting Properties,
and using the slider bar to lower the maximum size to something more
reasonable -- 1% to 2% should be more than enough space.



--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell

 

[Rock]

I'm down to 9% free space on my 80 gig C drive and I've tried all the
usual
ways to free up more--defragging, adding a second hard drive and deleting
or
moving programs I don't need, etc. Is there a way to determine precisely
what programs and files are taking up so much of the space? I can't seem
to
make much of a dent in it.

Have you looked at how much space is allocated to system restore? Right
click My Computer | Properties | System Restore tab. System Restore by
default can use up to 12% of the drive which in your case would be 9.6 GB.
In practice system restore is only good going back a week or two at most, so
setting the space allowed for it to somewhere between 500MB and 1GB is a
workable amount. Click on settings in that window to change the allocation.
Turn off system restore on data only drives.

Also reduce the amount of space allocated to temporary internet files to
about 40-50MB.

 

[Andrew Murray]

Other suggestions:

Reduce your swap file size slightly (even by 10-20 megs, but may result in
performance degredation)

Reduce the space used by System Restore (this means less restore points).

I suggest reviewing all the applications you have on your machine -
including Windows components and uninstalling any you don't use.

If you have a new harddrive, then consider using it for storage of
documents, media files, downloads etc, and use the 80gig drive only for
Windows (and its system components). Everything else can be stored on the
second drive or on external media.

 

[LMO]

To answer your question of how do you see what progs and files are taking up
space, I use SeqoiaView (http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/). It gives you a
visual presentation of drive usage. Best of all, it's free!

 

[Plato]

I'm down to 9% free space on my 80 gig C drive and I've tried all the usual
ways to free up more--defragging, adding a second hard drive and deleting or
moving programs I don't need, etc. Is there a way to determine precisely
what programs and files are taking up so much of the space? I can't seem to
make much of a dent in it.

One can try:

http://www.bootdisk.com/utility.htm
GENERAL FILE UTILITIES
Show Folder Sizes