Nigel
It is likely that an allocation of 12% has been made to System Restore
on your C partition which is over generous. I would reduce it to 700 mb.
Right click your My Computer icon on the Desktop and select System
Restore. Place the cursor on your C drive select Settings but this time
find the slider and drag it to the left until it reads 700 mb and exit.
When you get to the Settings screen click on Apply and OK and exit.
If you are using the Norton Protected Recycle Bin or Rollback RX Pro
these can create significant free disk space issues. The programmes
create hidden folders, which can grow to colossal sizes.
Another default setting on a large drive which could be wasteful is that
for temporary internet files especially if you do not store offline
copies on disk. The default allocation is 3% of drive. Depending on your
attitude to offline copies you could reduce this to 1% or 2%. In
Internet Explorer select Tools, Internet Options, General, Temporary
Internet Files, Settings to make the change. At the same time look at
the number of days history is held.
The default allocation for the Recycle Bin is 10 % of drive. Change to
5%, which should be sufficient. In Windows Explorer place the cursor on
your Recycle Bin, right click and select Properties, Global and move the
slider from 10% to 5%. However, try to avoid letting it get too full as
if it is full and you delete a file by mistake it will bypass the
Recycle Bin and be gone for ever.
If your C drive is formatted as NTFS another potential gain arises with
your operating system on your C drive. In the Windows Directory of your
C partition you will have some Uninstall folders in your Windows folder
typically: $NtServicePackUninstall$ and $NtUninstallKB282010$ etc. These
files may be compressed or not compressed. If compressed the text of the
folder name appears in blue characters. If not compressed you can
compress them. Right click on each folder and select Properties,
General, Advanced and check the box before Compress contents to save
Disk Space. On the General Tab you can see the amount gained by
deducting the size on disk from the size. Folder compression is only an
option on a NTFS formatted drive / partition.
Select Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp to
Empty your Recycle Bin and Remove Temporary Internet Files. Also select
Start, All Programs, accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp, More
Options, System Restore and remove all but the latest System Restore
point. Run Disk Defragmenter. Follow this procedure for each partition
in turn.
Hope this helps.
Gerry
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FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
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